Wednesday, November 10, 2010

UFO Crashes and the Public Record

I got an email from a fellow the other day talking about the Del Rio UFO crash. He said that he had gone through the local newspapers, had interviewed various long time residents, and completed other research without finding out anything about the crash. That got me to thinking.

True, you could say that the government had effectively covered up the whole story. But then I thought about the big five in UFO crash reports and realized that they had never effectively covered up the stories.

Roswell, as you may remember, was reported in the newspapers all around the world as a flying saucer crash for about three hours. Then the cover story of the weather balloon kicked in and everyone forgot about it.

Jesse Marcel, Sr., then told Stan Friedman and Len Stringfield about it and the race was on. Newspaper clippings were found. Government documents were found and here I’m thinking of the FBI Telex as a good example and not the laughable MJ-12 papers. And, there were many witnesses who were there in Roswell who did remember something about it.

The Las Vegas crash of 1962 was reported in newspapers, especially those in the west. There were illustrations of the object that flashed through the sky and there are many official documents in the Project Blue Book files about the event including the report from a general officer. I talked with a couple of dozen witnesses who saw the thing in the sky, who reported it interacting with the environment, and police officials who went in search of the wreckage.

The Kecksburg crash of 1965 was reported in the newspapers and I have lots of clippings from them. There are many official documents in the Project Blue Book files and Stand Gordon has talked to dozens of witnesses. There are reports of something being taken out of the woods on a flatbed truck.

The Shag Harbour crash of 1967 was reported in the newspapers. The Condon Committee, the Air Force sponsored study of UFOs even mentions the case. Chris Styles and Don Ledger have uncovered dozens of official documents, there is a picture of the object (well, light) in the sky and they have talked to dozens of witnesses including police officials, military officers and many civilians.

The Washington state crash of 1979 was reported in the newspapers. There are few official documents but Jim Clarkson has talked with dozens of witnesses who were in the area. There are some police reports and Clarkson has learned of a possible military connection, meaning they cordoned off the crash site.

So how do these cases differ from Del Rio, and a few of the other, well known hoaxes? There is a paper trail to them. There are multiple first-hand witnesses who have been identified and who had spoken about what they have seen...

And, no, here it really matters little whether these crashes are the result of a natural, though extraterrestrial cause, or if the object that fell had been manufactured on another world. The point is that any researcher can find lots of documentation even if that documentation suggests a natural event rather than an alien craft.

With Del Rio there was nothing in the local newspapers and the first mention I have been able to find is 1968 in Pennsylvania. There are no independent witnesses in the area who can verify something strange. There are no military witnesses either.

The conclusion to draw here is simple. Even if the event was eventually classified there is some kind of open source to lead us to it. We can find newspapers and government documents. We can find independent witnesses who share part of the story with us... witnesses who have a demonstrated connection with the area and the time. But with Del Rio, and some of the other crash reports, there is nothing like that. It is just one more reason to suspect that nothing happened in those cases.

158 comments:

To be fair, the newspapers did not report a 'crash' at Roswell. They only reported the landing and recovery of a light instrument, which is rather different. Also the "government documents" amount to precisely one document - the FBI teletype.

Yes I agree the Del Rio 'crash' is fiction. Notice that Stan Friedman never refers to this in his exhaustive analyses of the MJ-12 papers. He also seems very reluctant to explain why his beloved Plains of San Augustin crash is not mentioned in the MJ-12 stuff. I share your views that these papers are "laughable".

Rendlesham is another 'crash' for which no contemporary press accounts exist. I wonder why.

I hadn't heard about either the 1962 Las Vegas crash incident or the 1979 Washington state case, so I did a little googling and came up with the following two links in a brief search, for those interested in further details:

Its always fun to read about crashes that happened in the past. If we assume that crashes happened in the past then we have to assume that they will happen in the future. So what preparation has the UFO community taken to cover future situations? Or will we all have to wait 10 or 30 years to hear about something that happens say next year or so?

Bob Koford wrote:"The incident is still unknown, even if it was labeled a meteor, and it has a paper trail."

Starting in late 1947, N.M. meteor expert Dr. Lincoln LaPaz was chasing after large "meteors" hoping to recover same. Nothing odd there, except for the fact that it was with the assistance of Army CIC and AFOSI, and sometimes even the FBI. Since when does military counterintelligence go after meteorites?

The first of these I know about was the large fireball seen in the Four Corners area near Shiprock, N.M. in Nov. 1948. La Paz, assisted by his student Boyd Wettlaufer and the CIC were looking for it. Allan Grant of LIFE Magazine was flown in to cover it. (However, Grant later insisted this was a distinctly different incident from Roswell, which he was also flown in for.) Wettlaufer would later talk about LaPaz discussing with him the extraterrestrial probe origins of the Roswell object.

The second instance was the famous Kansas/Nebraska fireball of Feb. 1948. Again the CIC assisted La Paz, until La Paz figured out it really WAS a meteor fireball, at which point the CIC wasn't interested anymore. But what were they interested in initially? La Paz eventually recovered a ton of valuable meteorite fragments that August. (As a side note, the recovery required calculating a precise trajectory, based on La Paz carefully interviewing eyewitnesses MONTHS after the event. So much for the skeptical pap that eyewitness testimony more than hours or a few days old is worthless.)

And then, starting in Dec. 1948, La Paz was hired by the military to go chasing after the mysterious green fireballs. The most notable of these early incidents was the great green fireball of Jan. 30, 1949, in which CIC, AFOSI, and the FBI assisted La Paz in interviewing hundreds of eyewitnesses from northern N.M. and west Texas. It is also notable that there is a CIC document stating they were looking for a possible crashed saucer. As far as we know, they never found the remains of a green fireball, but they were definitely looking. La Paz was also on record saying the green fireballs were almost definitely artificial objects.

At the very least, these incidents tell us that very soon after Roswell, military counter-intelligence was taking the possibility of crashed saucers VERY seriously. Why would they do that if Roswell was nothing but a balloon and the saucers in general were nothing but mass hysteria and misidentification (i.e., the official story)?

Once again, you miss the point. I noted that these real events were reported in the newspapers. There were stories about Roswell, about Las Vegas, about Kecksburg, etc. at the time of the events.

When we move into the realm of hoaxes, we do not have the newspaper reports of something happening. The Del Rio newspaper, for example, has no stories of UFOs in the days leading up to the various claims of a crash. Nothing appeared in the newspapers until Frank Scully reported on the Aztec crash many months after the alleged crash.

Finally, there are more official documents about Roswell. You forgot that both the unit histories of the 509th and the 8th Air Force. And no, you don't have to mention the balloon explanation. My point was that there is official documentation of the event.

In response to David Rudiak, the first involvement of Dr La Paz with a possible UFO was at the Four Corners episode on Oct 30, 1947 (not 1948). It occurred over an Indian reservation and the locals were reluctant to let outsiders in to investigate. It was thought to be a bright meteor that was seen but I believe the military were involved in case it was a plane on fire that had crashed. La Paz said how grateful he was for all the assistance they gave, even though nothing was recovered.

In the case of the Norton County (Kansas) meteorite fall of Feb 18, 1948 this is documented by La Paz in "Space Nomads: Meteorites in Sky, Field and Laboratory" (pub. 1961) in chapter 2, entitled "Meteorite Falls in the wheatland, USA". La Paz says that his Institute of Meteoritics began interviews of eye-witnesses AT ONCE by telephone & telegram, although the huge 2360 pound rock was not finally located until August. These interviews were sufficient for La Paz to determine the approximate area by March 3, and several smaller fragments were found in the spring, but it had to wait until two farmers noticed a big hole in their field in August before the main object was finally found and extracted. Once again, the initial reports had led people to think an airplane had fallen and was in flames. There were also considerable sound and smoke effects and the military played a part in the early stages of the investigation.

Regarding DR's "So much for the skeptical pap that eyewitness testimony more than hours or a few days old is worthless", DR should read Frank D.Drake's remarks about this in "UFOs, a Scientific Debate" (Carl Sagan & Thornton Page) chapter 12. It is ESSENTIAL that eyewitnesses are interviewed as soon as possible after events such as these. Drake remarks that after 5 days "people report more imagination than truth".

While on the subject of La Paz, I have never once seen a document (by La Paz or anyone else) about his involvement with the Roswell case. All we have is Lewis Rickett's 35-year old testimony. La Paz wrote many papers on his involvement with the green fireballs and on other meteor/meteorite cases but never once mentioned Roswell. What he DID mention was the great fireball incident David Rudiak referred to on Jan 30, 1949, which featured some witnesses in Roswell and the surrounding area. Interesting that not only was Rickett involved in the investigation (along with numerous other AF personnel) but that Rickett actually co-authored an official paper on the incident, which is available in Blue Book files.

In view of the above I think we can safely say that Rickett's claim of being in on the July 1947 Roswell investigation is due to false memories, and that he is confusing the case with the green fireball case 18 months later.

We can also safely say that Dr Lincoln La Paz had NO involvement with the Roswell affair of July 1947, whatever Rickett may claim. Those who want to challenge this assertion, I request that you please produce some documentation to disprove me, and not rely on 35-year old testimony.

OK, you did your best Kevin. But don't you agree that if Roswell was the earth-shattering event you claim it was, and that with Dr LaPaz, as an astronomer highly interested in UFOs and who had a UFO sighting of his own very soon after Roswell, there ought to be plenty of papers from La Paz on his involvement with Roswell. Surely such important papers were not destroyed. Where are these papers Kevin? Where are the similar documents from other participants?

We have loads of documentation on the green fireballs, from LaPaz, Rickett, Cavitt and others. We have none whatever on Roswell. Why not?

See Pflock's book, chapter 10. You have to face the awful conclusion that he and I, and others have come to: namely that LaPaz had NO involvement with Roswell. Neither did Rickett. Neither, quite possibly, did Cavitt and Zimmermann, although these last two constitute a 'grey area'.

You have no real experience with classified materials. I make this bold statement by some of the conclusions you draw.

Secret material is treated differently than Top Secret material. Secret is routinely downgraded (unless specifically marked otherwise) and stored in a safe weighing no less than 600 pounds and found inside a locked room with restricted access. Top Secret is downgraded only upon review and is stored in a vault with controlled access...

So, while LaPaz, et. al. might be swimming in secret material that has long since been automatically downgraded and available for decades in the public arena, a project classified Top Secret could still be classified... LaPaz and many other would have known this.

Please explain how you can reject Rickett's testimony as being the result of confabulation, false memory and confusion but will accept Charles Moore's testimony as startling accurate given the passage of time.

And while I happily admit that I have found no connection between LaPaz and Roswell, other than Rickett's suggestion, I will also note that the others you named were clearly there at the right time and have discussed the events.

You also might want to explain which version of Cavitt's story you find persuasive...

And finally, Karl Pflock wrote with an agenda (as we all do) and I have found errors in his reporting on Roswell. And let's not forget Kurt Peters.

Kevin:Can't you see that because there is no documentation on Roswell, you cannot say whether it would be 'Top Secret' or 'Secret'? The ETHers always assume it would have been TS but it is only an assumption, as also is the assumption that even if it were originally TS it would remain such 60 years later.

So once again you are making assumptions (as Stan Friedman et al do) that may or may not be true.

I do not believe a single official Roswell document will ever turn up, but if perchance it does, it will be VERY interesting to see what classification markings it has.

I do not accept the accuracy of Charles Moore's memories on everything he writes. You are perfectly correct that unless accompanied by contemporary documents, his memories may be no better than, say, Rickett's. The trouble with Rickett is that we have documents that contradict what he says about LaPaz and Roswell. How can he claim, for instance, that LaPaz calculated what course the object took (where it flew and its velocity, weight etc) from knowing where it landed? LaPaz worked in exactly the opposite sense, i.e. he calculated, using eye-witness sighting reports, where a meteorite probably landed, and then searched for it. Rickett has him doing all this in REVERSE! Of course if you want to believe Rickett was involved in BOTH Roswell and the green fireballs then you have to wonder why he only mentioned one of these incidents (and almost certainly confused it with the other).

Likewise if Moore was involved with the green fireballs, where is the documentation on this?Answer: there is none because Moore never was involved, and never claimed he was. Simple, isn't it?

I don't know the answer to Cavitt. Some ufologists had great doubts over what he told the USAF. The AF accepted his testimony to them (so it seems), but others do not. Yet they do accept what he said to UFO investigators, such as yourself. A bit of confusion, to say the least. This CAN be explained by asserting that Cavitt was never at the Roswell ranch, but I concede that this is just speculation. Don't forget that Cavitt initially denied being there to Moore & Friedman when they first met him, in 1982, I believe. The matter seems inconclusive. Another case of dodgy 40-year old testimony.

CDA said: "LaPaz worked in exactly the opposite sense, i.e. he calculated, using eye-witness sighting reports, where a meteorite probably landed, and then searched for it. Rickett has him doing all this in REVERSE!"

This is a very good point. He specialized in finding the locations, not the other way around. But that doesn't mean he couldn't also project in the opposite way, to map out a trajectory, does it?

He's all throughout the Grudge files, but its always about meteors. Except, wasn't he also called upon to investigate the strange sound that guard heard over his shack? (1948, I think)

Weaver's interview of Cavitt is one of the more interesting documents regarding Roswell. Weaver did a nice job of creating a good environment for recollection. He and Cavitt chatted about life in counter intelligence. Very comfortable setting for Cavitt. Mary Cavitt's comments are more than interesting. We can see the operation of recollection being reinforced in the interplay between the Cavitts. We also see Cavitt close to 'real time', see his mind at work. Good stuff. Compare this to the interviews in The Roswell Incident, for example of Marcel Sr. The question "How did the Roswell Base know about the crash at Brazel's ranch?" The resonse is seven paragraphs of about a page and a half of text.

One reason the Cavitts might distinguish the one event from the other is that they had just moved to Roswell and the RAAF a few days earlier in 1947.

Events do not occur in isolation which is why two events with some superficial similarities do not by 'nature', so to speak, become confused as time goes by.

Because Roswell advocates chose legalistic terminology for their investigation (witness, affidavit, testimony etc), the skeptics have answered with their own legalistic terminology, that of the expert witness and a prosecutorial use of "memory". Both approaches deserve each other.

By being aware of the distinct domains of speech and writing, one can avoid the ludicrous adventure of 'psychoanalysing' texts printed on pieces of paper.

It is also clear that they discussed what would be talked about prior to starting the tape. At one point Weaver asked Cavitt if he knew what it was. Cavitt said it was a balloon. Weaver's next, logical question should have been, "Did you tell Marcel this?" Or "Did you mention this observation to anyone?"

Instead, they go off on another tangent.

FYI: I interviewed Cavitt at his home in Squim, Washington after he had been interviewed by Weaver. Cavitt told me at that time that he had not been out to the Brazel ranch. I said that both Marcel and Rickett said that he was with them and that Marcel said that he was accompanied by an old West Texas boy who could ride. Cavitt said, "That sounds like me."

So, even after Weaver talked to him, Cavitt was lying to us... as he had lied to us in the past.

I wonder if you are jumping on Cavitt unfairly, by saying he lied to you (twice).

To me Cavitt's testimony has always appeared forced, in a way. In one Of Bill Moore's FOCUS issues, Moore tells how he & Friedman first met him, in 1982. After the interview Cavitt suddenly went to his bookshelf, took down a copy of THE ROSWELL INCIDENT and asked Moore to autograph it. Now why would Cavitt have such a book at all? Either he really was involved at Roswell and obtained the book to see the 'whole story' or, more likely, Friedman sent him a copy after they tracked him down but before they met him. The latter is the version I prefer, but either is possible.

I get the feeling that M & F steered Cavitt into believing he was with Marcel that day when he may well not have been. It was Marcel who first mentioned Cavitt as his 'partner' but this was based on 32-year old memories. And Rickett only named Cavitt as a participant at the ranch AFTER Cavitt had given Rickett's name to M & F, and Rickett was then interviewed. Maybe R & C knew each other quite well, but we still cannot be certain they were together at the ranch on that day or days. This is the crucial problem.

You are, again, stuck with these ancient, dubious memories and no documentation. The only documents known to have been written by Cavitt and Rickett are in regards to the green fireballs affair 18 months after Roswell.

You now claim Cavitt lied to you. Did he, or is he too suffering from false memory? I cannot believe he lied to Col. Weaver. Why should he have lied to you?

Part ICDA nonsensically wrote (what else is new?):I get the feeling that M & F steered Cavitt into believing he was with Marcel that day when he may well not have been. It was Marcel who first mentioned Cavitt as his 'partner' but this was based on 32-year old memories.

CDA and his "feelings". Yes, and obviously the evil M & F also climbed into a time machine, went back to July 8, 1947, and got Brazel to say that Marcel was accompanied by "a man in plain clothes" in his Roswell Daily Record interview.

Not satisfied, the criminal masterminds, using their Jedi mind powers of persuasion, also had Jason Kellahin of Associated Press write: "These are not the Droids you want." No wait, that was another incident.

Instead Kallahin wrote, "Major Jesse A. Marcel and a man in civilian clothes whom Brazel was unable to identify went to the ranch and brought the pieces of material to the air field."

M & F also got the Roswell Daily Record to report on July 8, 1947, "Major Marcel and a detail from his department went to the ranch."

I guess Marcel must have picked up a civilian hitchhiker while journeying out to the ranch. Maybe it was M or F or CDA.

Or maybe, just maybe, Marcel was accompanied by a member of the CIC, who typically did not wear Army uniforms and dressed in civilian clothes to help conceal their identities. There weren't a lot of CIC guys at Roswell: Cavitt, Rickett, and 2 or 3 others. But Marcel named Cavitt, Rickett named Cavitt, and even Cavitt eventually named Cavitt (in his AF Weaver interview) after previously denying involvement or even being at Roswell. (And Cavitt's wife Mary Cavitt implicated Cavitt, as did Cavitt's later CIC boss, Col. Doyle Reese.)

In the real world, this is pretty convincing evidence that Cavitt did indeed go out to the ranch.

And Rickett only named Cavitt as a participant at the ranch AFTER Cavitt had given Rickett's name to M & F, and Rickett was then interviewed.

Yes, M & F should have used their time machine to interview Rickett at a time before Cavitt named him, to avoid witness contamination.

Maybe R & C knew each other quite well, but we still cannot be certain they were together at the ranch on that day or days. This is the crucial problem.

The crucial problem is the endless silly arguments, false information, and adamant psychological denial of the debunkers, that coupled with endless argument by proclamation. It couldn't be, because they personally don't believe it could be, or classic CDA.

You are, again, stuck with these ancient, dubious memories and no documentation. The only documents known to have been written by Cavitt and Rickett are in regards to the green fireballs affair 18 months after Roswell.

So Cavitt and Rickett were not stationed at Roswell before the green fireballs?

Part II:You now claim Cavitt lied to you. Did he, or is he too suffering from false memory? I cannot believe he lied to Col. Weaver. Why should he have lied to you?

Well let's see. When first contacted by M & F and R & S, Cavitt denied ever being stationed at Roswell. Kind of hard to forget that methinks, unless in advanced stages of dimentia.

Then when documentation was provided proving he was stationed there, the story suddenly changed to he arrived afterward. Then when that lie was exposed, it became, yes he was there but he wasn't involved.

Finally Weaver interviews him, and suddenly his memory improves remakably. Yes he was there, he was at the ranch, but it was only a tiny balloon crash no bigger than his living room (the old 1947 single weather balloon cover story). He never met Brazel, went out with Rickett, not Marcel (which Weaver changed in his affidavit to going out with both Marcel and Rickett).

Then AFTER admitting to Weaver his involvement, R&S contacted him again, and it was back to he was never involved.

Thus initially M&B and then R&S implanted a "false memory" that Cavitt was never stationed at Roswell. Later they implanted another "false memory" that he was never involved. Then Weaver implanted yet another "false memory" that he was indeed involved. Then R&S created the old "false memory" that he was never involved. Dang, these "false memories" sure are complicated. Cavitt was as malleable as play dough.

However, a far more economical explanation is an old counter-intelligence agent sticking to his security oath and lying his ass off to protect secrets he swore to uphold.

David wrote: "Or maybe, just maybe, Marcel was accompanied by a member of the CIC, who typically did not wear Army uniforms and dressed in civilian clothes to help conceal their identities. There weren't a lot of CIC guys at Roswell: Cavitt, Rickett, and 2 or 3 others."

It is more evident than that. CIC officers wore civilian clothes. Unless CIC enlisted men were under cover, they wore a uniform. So, it was Cavitt as there was no other CIC officer at the Field.

I consider the issue of false memory to be a way to avoid dealing with the evidence. If we add up all the claims of "false memory" the result is a singularity of implausibility. It isn't skepticism. It is nihilism, with more than a tinge of paranoia for flavor.

I have to wonder why certain things were retained for publication in Weaver's interview of Cavitt, the barbecue at the Marcels' for one. Pflock "our chief debunker" for another. The comments about Jack Williams, too.

David Rudiak, in his usual sarcastic manner, has simply demonstrated that Cavitt indeed was not someone whose memory could be trusted, nor could he be trusted to tell the truth when his memory was sound.

All DRs comments show is that Cavitt's testimony to Moore, Friedman, Randle, Schmitt & Weaver, and anyone else, is full of holes. Yet DR still trusts this testimony. He trusts it because he (DR) wants desperately to maintain the fiction that an ET craft crashed in the desert, and a number of AF (and maybe CIC) guys retrieved it.

I never claimed that NOBODY was with Marcel on the ranch; I merely said it may not have been Cavitt. So all DR's talk of time machines is irrelevant.

I have referred to official papers written by Cavitt and Rickett which conclusively show that both were involved with the green fireballs investigations. I possess these appers. If the Roswell incident was as earth-shattering as Kevin and DR claim, (far more so than the fireballs episode) is it too much to expect either of them to produce similar documents showing Cavitt & Rickett's involvement with Roswell? No, please do NOT try that old fallback - they are still top secret. Sure!

Yes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so the lack of such documents proves little, but it certainly strongly suggests (in Rickett's case anyway) that he was NOT at the ranch at all. Neither was Lincoln LaPaz. Rickett brought LaPaz into the picture through faulty memory and confusing Roswell with another incident.

So I issue the challenge to DR, Kevin and anyone else - please locate documents showing both Cavitt & Rickett were indeed at the Brazel ranch. Then show these docs to the world, particularly to those scientists desperate to finally discover genuine proof of ETs visiting the earth.

I mistakenly wrote that "Yet DR still trusts this [Cavitt's] testimony".

What I should have said was: "Yet DR still trusts those parts of Cavitt's testimony where he (Cavitt) admits to being at the ranch and helping with the retrieval, but does not trust those parts where he says otherwise".

"He also seems very reluctant to explain why his beloved Plains of San Agustin crash is not mentioned in the MJ-12 stuff."

Long ago, he "explained" that a crash involving an ET would've called for a higher level of classification than that of a preliminary briefing paper. I don't buy that myself but hey, why not go to his website and try duking it out with him, lol.

Kevin said: "Trust the stuff that can be corroborated through other sources...

Well, therein lies the Great Problem with the Roswell case.

I remember well your defense of Frank Kaufmann- you believed him because others corroborated parts of his story.

And then- pretty much of ALL of the details in Maj Marcel's story have been disputed by many of the others; Were they "wooden members" or "metal I-beams". And what about "The Gouge". What direction was the craft coming from?

Col DuBoise- which version do you want to subscribe to? It goes on and on, as you well know.

My point is you can't toss Cavitt out just because there are some points that others disagreed with. If you apply that standard to ALL Roswell testimony, there is no story left.

What differentiates the Roswell story from other weather balloon/kite flying disk stories that week in 1947 is, of course, the Roswell Army Air Field's statement that it had a flying disk in its possession. And that is the reason there ought to have been a CIC investigation, no matter if the disk were a weather balloon kite or the Ark of the Covenant dropped from God's Flaming Chariot. It was the CIC's job.

Don wrote:What differentiates the Roswell story from other weather balloon/kite flying disk stories that week in 1947 is, of course, the Roswell Army Air Field's statement that it had a flying disk in its possession. And that is the reason there ought to have been a CIC investigation, no matter if the disk were a weather balloon kite or the Ark of the Covenant dropped from God's Flaming Chariot. It was the CIC's job.

The whole fiasco should have been investigated from top to bottom, but it was not. Here's what we had. The newspapers were full of stories of strange new craft called flying saucers, some reported flying at very high speeds and maneuvering in odd ways (e.g. Kenneth Arnold's original report).

Then, allegedly, the Roswell head intelligence officer and counterintelligence officer recover simple balloon debris that any 5-year old could identify and the base commander then authorizes a press release saying they have recovered a flying saucer. This sets off a huge national and international press feeding frenzy, allegedly catching the higher chain of command completely off guard, including Gen. Ramey in Fort Worth, and the entire Pentagon, including acting Chief of Staff Gen. Vandenberg. The Pentagon and Ramey are inundated with phone calls and have the rest of their day disrupted, by what Gen. Ramey soon says is nothing but a common weather balloon.

Roswell AAF is the one and only atomic bomber base, yet senior officers are behaving like drooling idiots and seem to be operating outside of the chain of command. Something is obviously seriously wrong with the senior staff at Roswell. Would there have been an investigation? You betcha--Vandenberg and Ramey would have insisted on it. And no doubt a few heads would have rolled.

But this did not happen. There was no investigation and nothing happened to the officers responsible. C/O Blanchard goes on to a stellar career. Marcel stays on another year (meantime getting a promotion to Lt. Col. in the Reserves) before getting booted upstairs to higher intelligence work in Washington. Upon his transfer, Gen. Ramey calls Marcel "outstanding", command officer material, and complains he has nobody to replace him. These are very strange career arcs for alleged bumbling officers.

Something is very wrong with this picture. The absence of a follow-up investigation into the weather balloon/flying disc public relations fiasco at Roswell is a Sherlock Holmesian "dog that didn't bark" moment. The missing investigation and total lack of any further documentation is in itself highly suggestive of a cover-up.

The lack of follow-up or whether Ramey or Vandenberg would order an investigation afterwards doesn't affect that it would have been SOP, I think, for the CIC to have reported internally.

The CIC, I think, would have investigated, not afterwards but during. Their interest was sabotage and espionage, and the reliability (Cavitt: "a solid citizen") of the RAAF's officers. They would be interested, as well, in civilians with close connections to base affairs. In this case Wilcox, Brazel, and staff of the radio stations and newspapers, for example.

Even if Roswell was as many skeptics maintain "nothing much", The RAAF's CIC men would, I think, have to have reported on it.

And that is also why for Rickett this Roswell and any Green Fireball events were distinct and not conflatable, no matter what the Roswell "flying object" was.

Dave said:"The Pentagon and Ramey are inundated with phone calls and have the rest of their day disrupted, by what Gen. Ramey soon says is nothing but a common weather balloon."

(...sigh!) Here we go again!

What interested Marcel, and what Ramey described to the press, was NOT a "common weather balloon". I am not sure why you, and many others, feel the need to repeat constantly this little bit of blatant misinformation.

I take that back... I do know why you do it.

Describing the pertinent parts of the debris dishonestly makes your argument more seem valid, especially when you throw in the "5 year old" crack- I feel confident that "any 5 year old" would have a very difficult time identifying a RAWIN. I sure you feel that way too, which is why you are consistently less than honest whenever the subject comes up.

So, it would be most interesting to hear your reasoning as to why you feel so motivated to continue to promote this blatant bit of misrepresentation.

Actually the first reports are even more strange, because it is very unlikely the continual references to a rather large piece, "disc", or "instrument" that the rancher had in his possession was based on reports of a rawin target and sticks, and yet one never sees it mentioned again.

It is a very unlikely occurrance.

It is, in fact, this very point, plus the mention in the FBI memo of the facts not bearing out about it being a balloon, and target...hexagonal, or otherwise.

This FBI memo must have been referring to the original large piece. It is this "instrument" that is being hidden.

Do not read too much into the FBI memo.The 8th AF at Ft Worth (where several had seen the object) described it as hexagonal etc. The guy at the other end of the phone at Dayton, whoever he was, had not seen it and wanted it shipped to Dayton in case it was something unusual - a new Russian device perhaps. In other words, he had some doubts, probably due to the foolish press release from Roswell.

That, to put it simply, is why there was some doubt at Dayton about the object's identity at the time of the phone call from Ft Worth. Nothing more need be read into this FBI teletype. There was thus no "hidden" piece of debris, and no cover-up.

To Bruce H.I too am confident that any 5-year old would have great difficulty identifying a Rawin target. I am just as confident a 5-year old would have great difficulty identifying a weather balloon. He could, however, probably identify a toy balloon.

Talking about 5-year olds, recall that there was one witness to Roswell, a certain Gerald Anderson (whom Stan Friedman heavily promoted) who was precisely this age at the time of the events he witnessed, with his uncle. Trouble is that he has long been discredited, at least to the satisfaction of everyone except Friedman. Clever lad, that 5-year old - too clever in fact!

Focalized FIRST in a chimeria that an absolut-uncredible-awesome civilization have been abble to reach us, passing space and time bounderies, but cause they were dunk, they crashed in New Mexico. Huuu, their bad. Arf, unlucky ETs...

Got the picture! But why not, in David Rudiak world.

But SECOND, got the picture of that chimeria: In the same time, by a new law of probabilities (mimetism), what are described by the (few real) witnesses have identity relations, isomorphisms, simililarities, with a project in time and place using Balloons and Merri-Lei radar targets. It is the supra hight tecnological parts of this uncredible spacecraft!

Why not (in David Rudiak world). That's not a coincidence! No No and No! Never I will surrender!

Zoom THIRD in that chimeria:it is testimoned a detail the witnesses (the real and first ones) cant INVENT, an DNA:

A candy tape, cause American Merri-Lei Corporation was the toys manufactury in charge of such Radar-targets...

PURE new coincidence! No no and no! It is the evidence of the power of the conspiracy to cover-up Roswell! ET have candy tape. Spacecraft TUNING, you know... (what?, that's possible, you ignore ET fashion concerning spacecraft..).

Do you remember Victor Hoefflich (Bergen (New Jersey) EveningRecord july the 12th, 1947). As historiographical source ruining the Roswell myth?

Pfff, a PURE new coincidence that newpaper picture! Bad Skeptics, you understand nothing in probabilities laws! No no and no! He have been pictured in 1947 just to prevent 90's investigation will call Merri-Lei corporation pist to explain the tape and the tuning fashion of their ET craft!That's the 1947 strategy! For ET and USAAF!

ZOOM 4TH: ML307 blue print stipulated in a marge to reinforce with 3M tape the radar-targets...

A new coincidence! That's part the cover-up... Chuuuut... PURe coincidence.

ZOOM 5th: there exist 3M candy tapes with symbols.

Pure coincidences in David Rudiak rethoric! That's a big conspiration.

And D.R will send his work in each academic areas. But not in fact, they are part of the conspiracy too... CDA too.. And each of us not O.K. with him. My neightboors too.

Bob: "Actually the first reports are even more strange, because it is very unlikely the continual references to a rather large piece, "disc"..."

I don't recall any of the references being direct quotations of any of the 'actors', Brazel, Wilcox, Marcel. There are lots of implied attributions, though.

"Flying disk" is the press release language. There is no direct evidence in those stories that anyone actually said "flying disk". The AP decided Haught [sic] was responsible for the term, and the UP that Blanchard was. Neither presented any proof of their conclusion.

There is just storyline without specificity. Could the disc be "picked up" by a hand or a tow truck? Could it be "stored" in a bag or in a barn? Was Marcel "notified" by telephone or carrier pigeon?

Part II wrote:"The Pentagon and Ramey are inundated with phone calls and have the rest of their day disrupted, by what Gen. Ramey soon says is nothing but a common weather balloon."

Bruce Hutchinson inanely responded (followed soon by personal attack):What interested Marcel, and what Ramey described to the press, was NOT a "common weather balloon".

What interested Marcel was indeed NOT a "common weather balloon", as he made clear 30+ years later. It was material with highly anomalous properties. Weather balloons, and even Mogul balloons, are not made of highly anomalous materials but very ordinary and mostly flimsy materials.

What also interested Marcel was the huge size and unusual distribution of the debris field. Marcel was even quoted back in 1947--not 30 years later-- saying that the debris was “scattered over a square mile of land."

As for Ramey, he was very much claiming the ruckus was all caused by a “common weather balloon”. Maybe you should read the newspapers from back then, instead of accusing me below of “blatant misrepresentation.” In fact, I’m so tired of this sort of character assassination from the likes of Bruce Hutchinson, I’m going to go into great and gory historical detail to show how nonsensical his whole pathetic argument is.

Let’s start with this early UP quote from Ramey:

“Ramey said he couldn't let anybody look at the thing or photograph it because Washington had clamped a ‘security lid’ on all but the sketchiest details . ‘The object,’ he said, ‘is in my office right now and as far as I can see there is nothing to get excited about. It looks to me like the remnant of a weather balloon and a radar reflector.’" [Note Ramey citing high security and nobody else viewing the object at that point—therefore IDing the debris well BEFORE weather officer Newton makes the official ID.]

Ramey also adds, “He said that the ‘so-called disc’ was of box kite construction and covered with tinfoil. Ramey also revealed that part of a weather balloon was found nearby when it was picked up in New Mexico.” [So, according to Ramey, not even one whole weather balloon, much less multiple balloons of a Mogul.]

Marcel also was quoted saying he recovered a balloon target device. (Marcel was never accused back then of screwing up, instead PIO Haut was blamed by AP and Blanchard by UP for the alleged flying disc “confusion”):

"Brazell then hurried home, and bright and early Sunday, dug up the remnants of the kite balloon," Marcel continued… "…we spent a couple of hours Monday afternoon looking for any more parts of the weather device. We found a few more patches of tinfoil and rubber."

Then Newton was brought in, and was quoted saying that all the Army weather stations used the devices, in fact there were commonly used all over the country:

“Newton said four of the wind sounding devices were released daily by every Army weather station in the nation.” (UP)

“Warrant Officer Irving Newton… said the object was a ray wind target used to determine the direction and velocity of winds at high altitudes. He said there were some 80 weather stations in the United States using this type of balloon and that it could have come from any one of them.” (UP)

"Newton… said some 80 weather stations in the U.S. were using that type of balloon and that it could have come from any of them." (AP)

In later stories Ramey emphasizes the commonality of the balloon/targets:

“Speaking over a Fort Worth radio station to ‘deflate’ the wild stories that discovery of the device had touched off, Ramey said the object was ‘a high-altitude weather observation device—a very normal gadget in Weather Bureau operations." He identified it as "remnants of a tin foil-covered box kite and a rubber balloon." (UP) [Again notice SINGULAR balloon/target description]

Part II:In fact, the whole story back then from Ramey and the military was just how COMMON the targets were, so common that they accounted for all the saucer reports. More quotes:

*"It was part of a box-kite type or weather balloon used by U.S. Weather Bureau and Army meteorological stations all over the country." (Wash. Post, 7/9)

* Newspaper report on radar target crash in N.Y. "The balloon and target kite are used by the U.S. Weather Bureau and Army to measure wind velocity and direction." (Yonkers Herald-Statesman, 7/11)

* AP science writer Howard Blakeslee, 7/20: "[The Roswell flying disc] arrived in Fort Worth and was identified as the radar target of a weather balloon. About a hundred of these targets are sent up daily all over the United States."

Followup military debunking demos:

* Army demo, Wilmington, Ohio, near Wright Field, July 10. The Rawin target looks like this as it leaves the ground. … the Navy sent one up experimentally over Atlanta, Ga., the other day and Atlanta newspapers were swamped with saucer reports. Weather stations in all sections send them up every day." (Columbus Citizen, July 11)

* Atlanta Naval radar target demonstrations, July 9, 10: "Although the 'ray wind' was invented several years ago, its use became general only recently. 'People are just beginning to see these things,. …and that's probably why they are all excited about them now.'" (Atlanta Constitution, July 10)

"Invented several years ago, the "ray wind" has only recently come into general use." (National UP story, multiple newspapers)

"Chief Frank F. Roberts, in the Aerology Department at the Naval Air Station, said he had checked newspaper reports of persons who had spotted "flying saucers," and in every case they were near a radar unit using "raywins." (Atlanta Constitution, July 11)

* Alamogordo, N.M., July 9: "Local "flying discs", and possibly those throughout the nation, simmered down to balloon-piloted observation radar targets loosed from the Alamogordo Army Air Base and related bases throughout the nation.” “…This is undoubtedly the device reported far and wide as the 'flying disc.'" (Alamogordo News, July 10)

Other stories:

* Army weather officer, Wilmington, Ohio, July 5 (after identifying crashed Circleville radar target): "Lt. Robert Straub, officer of the day at the Clinton County Air Base scene of the Army Air Forces All-Weather Flying Center said the device was known as a 'radiosone.' 'It is used to take sounding by radar of the atmosphere,' he said. 'Every weather station in the country uses them.'" (Columbus Citizen, July 6) [Interesting because this was said 2 or 3 days BEFORE Roswell]

* Roswell weather man L. J. Guthrie: "The weather service has been dabbling with radar controlled balloons and similar devices for some time. Guthrie said that a great deal of meteorological equipment and supplies had been given to the weather service by the army after the close of the war, and that among the equipment was some of the radar triangles and other radar controlled devices. 'These instruments are sent up daily and from scores of places all over the United States,' Guthrie said. . . " (Roswell Daily Record, July 9)

The theme of widespread RAWIN use accounting for the saucer reports continued for at least several more years, e.g., this 1949 infamous UFO debunkery article in the Saturday Evening Post:

"The most common sources of innocent deception in the balloon field are the so-called RAWIN (radar-wind) target balloons. ...At the very time the saucer sightings were at their height [in 1947], the Air Force had just turned over thousands of surplus RAWINS to Weather Bureau stations all over the country, so they were used in greater numbers than ever before."

Part III:I am not sure why you, and many others, feel the need to repeat constantly this little bit of blatant misinformation.

Gee, all I know is what I read in the newspapers. The story back then was widespread use of the radar targets and how this accounted not only for Roswell, but flying saucer reports all over the nation. Sorry to confuse you with actual historical facts.

However, in the present day, widespread use has been severely contracted by Roswell debunkers into, “only used by Project Mogul.” Talk about “blatant misinformation.”

Describing the pertinent parts of the debris dishonestly makes your argument more seem valid, especially when you throw in the "5 year old" crack- I feel confident that "any 5 year old" would have a very difficult time identifying a RAWIN. I sure you feel that way too, which is why you are consistently less than honest whenever the subject comes up.

I fail to see what is “dishonest” about it. Of course a 5-year-old could not identify a RAWIN target, but that’s not the point, not to mention the fact that we are dealing with adults. But even a normal 5-year-old back then would have no trouble identifying the MATERIALS, a simple rubber balloon, and some sort of balsa wood kite made up of balsa sticks and foil and paper, all that is shown in the Fort Worth photos. All were common consumer materials, even back then. E.g., kid’s kites were made of balsa wood sticks covered with paper. Balsa wood toy airplanes were common. Most kids had birthdays with balloons. Weather balloons are just big rubber balloons, but a rubber balloon is a rubber balloon.

As for aluminum foil (AF) and foil-paper, I’ve looked up the histories in consumer items and they go back as far as 1910, starting first in Europe, then spreading to the U.S. in 1913 when Alcoa opened its first aluminum foil plant. Wrigley’s began wrapping their chewing gum and then Lifesaver’s almost immediately with AF. Hershey’s, which had been using tinfoil since 1900 with their chocolate bars (then Hershey’s Kisses in 1907), switched over to AF too, to eliminate the tinny taste left behind by true tinfoil. Tobacco products such as cigars and cigarettes were also soon wrapped in AF to preserve freshness. The biggest single customer of the new Reynold’s aluminum (in addition Reynold’s tobacco products) in 1922 was the hugely popular Eskimo Pies (sold millions every day), which were always wrapped in AF.

The point is, AF had been around for decades before Roswell in common consumer products, that even kids, much less grown men, would be familiar with.

More history: Home-use AF rolls was first marketed in the late 1920s (but didn’t seem to take off until Reynold’s reintroduced in late1947). But by 1930, AF rolls and sheets were widely used in restaurants, hotels, and hospitals for wrapping food. AF bottle labels appeared in 1935 and in 1937 was the first mass use on liquor bottles. By then, aluminum foil had nearly 60% of the total metal foil market.

Laminated foil-paper seems to have made the scene around 1920 and was quickly adopted by various packaging and candy companies such as Wrigley’s and Hershey’s (which still use it today). Heavy foil-backed craft paper for insulation was introduced in 1935, again a common consumer item.

During the war, almost all Al production went to the military, such as in aircraft, insulation, electronics, and wrapping and preserving food for hostile environments. Nearly all candy and gum (of course much of it wrapped in AF and foil-paper) also went to the troops, and of course cigarettes, wrapped in AF. Radar jamming chaff used during the war was nothing more than Al foil-paper sent through a paper shredder, same stuff as for gum and candy wrappers.

Part IV (end):And again, we weren’t dealing with 5-year-old military people at Roswell. They were grown men, very familiar with all types of aluminum products used by the military and in consumer markets. (B-29’s, the “silver birds”, e.g., had all-aluminum skins.) One of Marcel’s official MO’s was “radar intelligence officer” (he had taken a 120 hour course at the end of the war). Not only would he presumably be familiar with foil candy bar wrappers, he would almost certainly also know about radar chaff and rawin targets, all made of the same “exotic” foil-paper stuff.

Marcel had also handled intelligence briefings for the 509th and 8th AAF during the atomic testing in the Marshall Islands the previous year. RAWIN targets would have been used extensively for charting upper air currents at Kwajalein base (absolutely essentially for the massive flight operations there and planning atomic tests). Kwajalein is a flat atoll island only about a square mile in size. Think Marcel might have seen a few RAWINS during several months stationed at Kwajalein or known about them from the weather reports he incorporated into his briefings? No of course not. Debunkers have repeatedly accused Marcel of knowing nothing about weather balloons or radar targets. How did they determine this—psychic powers or seances with the dead perhaps? Marcel’s actual service record strongly suggests otherwise.

Not that it really matter if Marcel or others at Roswell could ID a RAWIN. It was made of common, flimsy, every-day materials that the average 5-year-old could indeed identify, and could hardly be confused with being the construction materials of the supersonic flying saucers in the news, unless one was a total fool. And of course, Ramey’s singular balloon that accompanied his singuilar radar target would be a dead giveaway that you were dealing with some sort of… balloon perhaps?

So, it would be most interesting to hear your reasoning as to why you feel so motivated to continue to promote this blatant bit of misrepresentation.

It would be most interesting to hear your reasoning as to why you feel so motivated to repeatedly accuse me of “blatant misrepresentation.” What I “promote” are historically verifiable FACTS, as presented in detail above. What do you “promote”, other than personal attack and baseless accusations (going way back to your debunking days on Usenet)? I certainly see no facts coming from you.

Part II: (cont. of discussion of La Paz and military search during 1948 Norton meteor bolide explosion)

Meteors and crashed planes were not the only suspects. E.g., in the same UP article, just before the B-29 item, “Some people blamed the explosion on ‘flying saucers’.” La Paz in his article also says there were rumors among civilians of a stray missile from White Sands with an atomic bomb, or even a foreign missile, but this is so easy for the military to check and also so unlikely, that I doubt the military considered it for half a second. The same with the crash of one of their aircraft.

So this leaves civilian aircraft, which the military doesn’t get involved with, meteors, which the military likewise cares nothing about, and—here it comes—“flying saucers”, which the military would very much be interested in, until told otherwise.

Regarding DR's "So much for the skeptical pap that eyewitness testimony more than hours or a few days old is worthless", DR should read Frank D.Drake's remarks about this in "UFOs, a Scientific Debate" (Carl Sagan & Thornton Page) chapter 12. It is ESSENTIAL that eyewitnesses are interviewed as soon as possible after events such as these. Drake remarks that after 5 days "people report more imagination than truth".

Thank you for taking the bait CDA. It was indeed Drake’s fatuous, unsubstantiated, unscientific, and purely anecdotal comment that I was thinking of, because La Paz, as in the case of the Kansas meteor, would go out months after the event, interview witnesses on-site, and get great data. Maybe it’s because Drake (referring to his own frustrating attempts to track down meteors) was a radio astronomer and a relative amateur when it came to tracking down meteorites. Unlike La Paz, finding meteors was NOT one of his astronomical specialties (in fact, I think this was the first time he had ever attempted it). It’s like comparing the detective skills of a rookie policeman to that of a seasoned detective, or comparing Inspector Clousseau to Sherlock Holmes. The reliability of the information you get depends a lot who on asks the questions.

I also wrote another a long post to UFO Updates critiquing Drake’s article in detail:

http://www.ufoupdateslist.com/1998/dec/m02-016.shtml

Drake also very much had a debunking agenda in this article concerning UFOs, with the usual hack argument about the lack of reliability of eyewitness testimony. But read his article further, and he admits witnesses are quite consistent and accurate in estimates of time and even directions if they have landmarks for reference.

Part II: (cont. of discussion of Frank Drake and his debunkery of the reliability of eyewitness testimony)

Drake also comments that eyewitnesses have consistently reported so-called instantaneous meteor sounds for hundreds of years, that they are highly consistent in reporting the sounds as a hissing or sizzling, and that often it is these sounds that attracts the attention of witnesses (and even that of animals, who often panic) when they are indoors and can’t even see the meteor. So this would seem to be strong evidence that the sounds are something real—no?

No! Not in the hands of a debunker trying to trash eyewitness testimony, because the topic is UFOs. According to Drake, despite all this evidence, the sounds can’t be real because he personally can’t think of a mechanism wherein witnesses could instantly detect meteor sounds (unlike a sonic boom from a meteor that might take minutes to arrive). So the witnesses MUST be wrong, because Drake just can’t personally believe it (sounds just like CDA-think). Drake instead hypothesizes a neurological abnormality wherein people hear the sounds because there is “a crossing of waves in the brain” wherein the sudden bright light of the meteor creates sounds instead, like people on LSD. So now Drake is dabbling in neurology, of which he obviously knows nothing.

Of course, this is ridiculous and explains nothing. E.g., this is right after Drake says people and animals hear the sounds even when they can’t see the meteor. Maybe they psychically see the meteor in their mind’s eye? Also why don’t we hear sizzling sounds when we see other bright lights, like a flash bulb going off, or leave a movie theater and go out into the bright sunlight?

Drake is spouting nonsense, but since he is also debunking UFO witnesses, everything he says is golden, right CDA?

Turns out a Drake also comments that eyewitnesses have consistently reported so-called instanteous meteor sounds for hundreds of years, that they are highly consistent in reporting the sounds as a hissing or sizzling, and that often it is these sounds that attracts the attention of witnesses (and even that of animals, who often panic) when they are indoors and can’t even see the meteor. So this would seem to be strong evidence that the sounds are something real—no?

No! Not in the hands of a debunker trying to trash eyewitness testimony, because the topic is UFOs. According to Drake, despite all this evidence, the sounds can’t be real because he personally can’t think of a mechanism wherein witnesses could instantly detect meteor sounds (unlike a sonic boom from a meteor that might take minutes to arrive). So the witnesses MUST be wrong, because Drake just can’t personally believe it (sounds just like CDA-think). Drake instead hypothesizes a neurological abnormality wherein people hear the sounds because there is “a crossing of waves in the brain” wherein the sudden bright light of the meteor creates sounds instead, like people on LSD. So now Drake is dabbling in neurology, of which he obviously knows nothing.

Of course, this is ridiculous and explains nothing. E.g., this is right after Drake says people and animals hear the sounds even when they can’t see the meteor. Maybe they psychically see the meteor in their mind’s eye? Also why don’t we hear sizzling sounds when we see other bright lights, like a flash bulb going off, or leave a movie theater and go out into the bright sunlight?

Drake is spouting nonsense, but since he is also debunking UFO witnesses, everything he says is golden, right CDA?

Turns out a physical theory of instantaneous meteor sounds (electrophonics) came out about 2 decades ago and they have since been recorded in the field. So the witnesses were right all along. Perhaps the UFO debunkers should learn a lesson from this, but probably won't.

To be truely usenettish, truely alt.alien.vistorish, Bruce would have to be referring to your naked use of "weather balloon". You must every time write it out fully as "weather balloon and rawin target" otherwise you are being "dishonest" because you are "blatantly misrepresenting".

Debunkers demanded bible-beltlike literalism at each reference, no matter it was the tenth time in the same paragraph.

Since the only physical part of the Mogul balloon assembly was the microphone array and associated telemetry system, does anyone know what this assembly actually looked like? Are there any drawings or photos of the actual microphone system housing used on Project Mogul? Was it hexagonal in shape?

I'd really like to know, since I've never seen a drawing or photo, and can't locate one online.

Oops! Meant to say "Since the only [top secret] physical part of the Mogul balloon assembly was the microphone array and associated telemetry system [that if recovered by civilians, and possibly turned over to civilian scientific authorities, might have provided an essential clue as to the Top Secret purpose of Mogul], above.

Also, what was the size or dimensions of this microphone assembly?

I assume it would have been circular, with microphones spread in a 360 degree array, so that the ULF frequencies given off by the detonation of a nuclear bomb test (and carried in the particular sound channel discovered to be conducive to carrying such LF sounds very long distances by audio refraction) which might be detected by one particular microphone more readily than the others in the array would provide data as to the direction the sound emanated from.

Even if the microphone/telemetry package used off-the-shelf parts, the specific assembly if it had been recovered by civilians and then turned over to scientists for analysis as to its function might very well have revealed its Top Secret purpose, so this is why I'm interested in any drawings, schematics (showing internal structure and placement of microphones, etc.), or photos of the original Mogul microphone array package.

Anyone know or can provide references / online links to such visual data?

Well, not everything. Drake's famous equation, which I won't go into here, is very interesting, but certainly not golden. (It isn't silver either).

Yes, maybe Drake's knowledge of meteorite searches was not his strong point. But it was certainly LaPaz's field of expertise.

Re the matter of LaPaz and the Norton (Kansas) meteorite, I gave a source for this and LaPaz did say his team collected the eye-witness info within a few days of the event, which considerably narrowed the area to search, although he did not locate the main portion of the huge meteorite until August. DR wrote that LaPaz was still using eye-witness testimony obtained in August. This is NOT what LaPaz wrote in the above source. It was partly by chance that the huge rock was finally located in a farmer's field.

LaPaz had various views of the nature of UFOs. I think that at the time of the green fireballs he was more concerned that the Soviets had a secret weapon that could reach the western US, but it is also true that he dabbled in natural phenomena (i.e. oddly behaving meteors) and possible ET craft, from time to time. As far as I know, he never said if his own sighting, in NM in '47, affected his views.

What has certainly NOT been established is that he had anything to do with Roswell. But I have written about all this before. What is equally certain is that if he had been so involved, he would have produced literally volumes of papers on it and that these papers would still be extant. He produced lots of official reports on the green fireballs; he produced some on the Norton meteorite. These are all available for the public.

So where is all the stuff he produced on Roswell? Any ideas, Kevin or David? Or are we forced to the dreadful (to you) conclusion that he produced nothing on Roswell because he was, quite simply, not involved with the case?

To Gilles:

Yes, both DR and Kevin live in a dream world. (Or maybe a dream universe).

Steve Sawyer wrote:Meant to say "Since the only [top secret] physical part of the Mogul balloon assembly was the microphone array and associated telemetry system [that if recovered by civilians, and possibly turned over to civilian scientific authorities, might have provided an essential clue as to the Top Secret purpose of Mogul], above.

"Hexagonal" was used by Ramey and his intel officer Kirton in news stories and the Dallas FBI telegram to refer to the shape of the RAWIN target.

The problem here is that such a shape description could only be applied to an intact and assembled 3-D RAWIN, not the torn up one laying flat in Ramey's office.

Even with an intact RAWIN, it is a very oddball description, since the ML-307 RAWINs would only appear "hexagonal" in profile when viewed from a distance, either from directly on top, or directly underneath, such as when was launched and disappearing into the sky.

(You could also describe a cube as "hexagonal" if you look directly at a corner, look only at the profile, and ignore the 3D structure of it, but it is a very weird shape description of a cube.)

Ramey and then Kirton were using the "hexagonal" shape description well before weather officer Irving Newton was called in to make his official ID, so it can't be attributed to Newton. Besides, Newton was quoted saying the RAWINs were shaped like "six-pointed stars", not "hexagons".

So how could Ramey/Kirton possibly come up with a "hexagon" description, well before they were even suggesting they were dealing with a radar target, unless it was fed to them from someone else ahead of time as part of the overall cover story?

I would guess they threw "hexagon" into the mix to make the very unsaucerlike RAWINs seem more "saucery" in shape.

I discuss in detail the mystery and cover-up implications of the "hexagonal" description over on my website. It also has diagrams and old photos to illustrate the strangeness of the hexagonal description applied to the RAWINs.

http://www.roswellproof.com/Rameys_hexagon_story.html

Also, what was the size or dimensions of this microphone assembly?

The story we get through the Mogulites, such as Charles Moore, was that the special microphones were still being assembled. In lieu of these they were using old Navy sonobuoys, which were cylindrical. So the microphones had nothing to do with "hexagonal".

Part 1:Don (Sourcerer) wrote:I read in old newspapers some of Dr La Paz's speculation on the green fireballs (I think these are from the early to mid 1950s):

that they might be matter pulled off of small objects in earth-orbit. There was some dust-up between La Paz and an Aviation Week editor about it.

There was an orbiting satellite story that broke in August 1954 in Aviation Week magazine. Supposedly two "natural" satellites had been found only 400 and 600 miles out that had only recently come into orbit. (Total nonsense for a "natural" satellite.) Both La Paz and fellow N.M. astronomer Clyde Tombaugh were named as searching for the satellites, with Army funding, and La Paz was named as being the one to actually find them.

La Paz vehemently denied the story, although La Paz and Tombaugh had been publicly announced as being involved in such a search months earlier. (Tombaugh even held a press conference to announce it.) The given cover story was that the military was interested in nearby "natural" earth satellites as possible space stations.

The ubiquitous Donald Keyhoe actually broke the story back in May 1954 on the Frank Edwards radio show. His Pentagon sources had already informed him of the discovery and that the information was being withheld from the public. In fact, the entire telescope search had been launched, said Keyhoe, because long-range radar had already picked up the objects in irregular orbits back in 1953.

More on this fascinating and largely forgotten part of UFO history here:

http://roswellproof.com/ramey_and_ufos.html#anchor_3625

that they might be ice-projectiles launched from Soviet aircraft.

Hadn't heard that one.

The last is a late addition to the hypothesis that ufos might be Soviet, not high-performance advanced aircraft, but propaganda weapons. Other entries were the ghost rockets and the flying discs.

La Paz later made a number of public statements that he thought the green fireballs to be artificial and possibly Soviet in origin. This thinking dated clear back to late 1948 and early 1949 when the military first contracted La Paz to study the green fireballs, and he quickly concluded (including from his own sighting) that they were completely unlike ordinary meteor fireballs in many different characteristics (e.g., they were sometimes seen to change direction). The fact that they were also seen passing directly over highly sensitive places like Los Alamos was additional evidence to La Paz that they might be Soviet spy devices.

Military intelligence/counterintel certainly considered the green fireballs very seriously. In fact there is a famous FBI memo saying they were briefed on Jan. 31, 1949 (day after a widespread green fireball sighting) that Army and Air Force intelligence considered the subject of both the flying saucers and fireballs to be "Top Secret". (So much for CDA and another of his recent bogus claims that there is no evidence that UFOs were ever considered top secret.)

Part 2:Don (Sourcerer) wrote:In the summer of 1947, how seriously did the army and especially army counter-intelligence consider the discs might very well be Soviet psy ops?

I don't think very seriously at all. In fact, on the same day as the Roswell press release (July 8), the Pentagon released a statement that they were certain the flying discs weren't a secret U.S. project, a bacteriological weapon of a foreign power (meaning the Russians), or "space ships".

Weighing heavily against the Russian hypothesis was the improbability of it. The Russians would have had to have had some amazing breakthrough in propulsion technology only 2 years after the war's end, when they were still reeling from the widespread devastation of the war.

However, the secret Schulgen AF intel study of July 1947, and then Twining's memo of Sept. 1947, make it quite clear they considered the flying discs to be real flying craft. The question was whose? Twining said the possibility of some super-secret domestic program should be considered, as well as "The possibility that some foreign nation has a form of propulsion possibly nuclear, which is outside of our domestic knowledge." However, I doubt if Twining or his people considered either such possibility very likely.

Thank you, David, for an exhaustive summary of events that clearly shows my criticism of your original remark was spot on.

It is interesting that despite all this scholarship, you still feel compelled to purposely demean it thusly- "... Gen. Ramey soon says is nothing but a common weather balloon." Then you add insultingly "... that any 5-year old could identify"

As your extensive defense clearly shows, the object of interest was the RAWIN radar reflector... that was carried aloft by a weather balloon. You know this to be true, yet you deliberately persist in falsely characterizing the debris description.

I won't follow you down your many side trails, but I will point out that even your amazingly perceptive 5 year old would not be able to correctly identify the brittle, weather blackened scraps of neoprene clearly visible on Ramey's floor. So your remarks fail the veracity test twice.

I wrote: "that they might be ice-projectiles launched from Soviet aircraft."

David: "Hadn't heard that one."

It's from newspaper stories in mid-September 1955, incluing both the LA Times and New York Times. It was an AP story out of Albuquerque. La Paz thought they might have been used for ranging or ballistic testing purposes rather than psyops, though.

It seems like he was perplexed by the absence of evidence for green fireball impacts (this was an issue with the ghost rockets, too, I recall) and ice projectiles answered for that. The stories note his interest in whether any witnesses report anything about water.

The CIC has a rather colorful, if not dramatic, history, politically, during the 1940s which is why I was wondering whether there is any evidence they, in 1947, were open to the Soviet psyops hypothesis.

David Rudiak brings up the subject of the two mystery objects allegedly discovered orbiting the earth by Tombaugh & LaPaz during their satellite searches in 1954. I refer DR to "Satellites, Rockets and Outer Space" by Willy Ley (2nd ed, 1962) where the author states, when discussing these searches: "To complicate matters a little more, there came a report one day that Tombaugh had discovered a small moon at a distance of 400 miles from the ground and another one at a distance of 600 miles. To this day the origin of the report is a mystery, but it is certain that it was a canard. When I asked Clyde Tombaugh about it he replied that not only had he not discovered any additional moons but that he had not even searched the regions 400 and 600 miles distant".

So there you have it. DR says LaPaz "vehemently denied" the report. Willy Ley tells us that Tombaugh also denied it and hadn't even searched that region. Good grounds, I would claim, for saying the whole thing was a hoax.

Does anyone still take this old report seriously? Yes, perhaps Keyhoe did at the time, with his alleged 'Pentagon sources' Yes, perhaps Frank Edwards did. Big deal!

This certainly is a very active discussion--I'm still trying to catch up with and digest all the comments so far before making any related comment of my own to the general debate, but I did want to thank you, David, for your input on the kind of microphone assembly that was being used on the initial Mogul tests in New Mexico.

So, they hadn't even put the actual specialized microphone and telemetry package together by then, and had jury-rigged some old cylindrical Navy sonobuoys instead? That's rather interesting, as then what could Ramey have been referring to when he used the term "hexagonal"?

I agree the RAWIN radar reflectors would not normally be described as hexagonal--that seems pretty strange. I had wondered if this might have been a slip of the tongue by Ramey, and that he might have accidentally referred to the shape of the alleged craft that was supposed to have crashed, if the microphone assembly did not have that shape or housing, which it seems now that you have informed us of the Navy sonobuoys being used instead, makes this reference by Ramey even more curious.

Do any photos, schematics, or drawings exist in the public domain or online of the specialized microphone systems that Mogul used later, such as in Europe? If so, where is this data, and what did this assembly look like? Does anyone know?

Part 1I wrote about Frank Drake's skeptically oft-quoted cynical statement about eyewitness testimony:"Everything he [Frank Frake] says is golden - right CDA?"

CDA:Well, not everything. Drake's famous equation, which I won't go into here, is very interesting, but certainly not golden. (It isn't silver either).

I'll take that as a concession (or maybe not--hard to tell with CDA) that Drake's statement about eyewitness reliability is in itself pretty worthless.

LaPaz had various views of the nature of UFOs. I think that at the time of the green fireballs he was more concerned that the Soviets had a secret weapon that could reach the western US, but it is also true that he dabbled in natural phenomena (i.e. oddly behaving meteors) and possible ET craft, from time to time. As far as I know, he never said if his own sighting, in NM in '47, affected his views.

La Paz's 1947 disc sighting 2 days after Roswell and near Roswell, was reported in LIFE magazine 1952:

http://roswellproof.com/life_1952.html#anchor_3458

LIFE commented that La Paz was quite certain about the anomalous nature of the object he sighted and that, "The object's appearance and behavior answer no known optical or celestial phenomenon. No known or projected aircraft, rocket or guided missile can make such a rapid vertical ascent without leaving an exhaust or vapor trail."

The article does not say what La Paz's opinion was as to the possible origins of the object.

La Paz's public and private views on the origin of UFOs are ambiguous. Publicly in the early 1950s he was also on record that the green fireballs might be Soviet spy devices. Toward the end of his life (soon after Socorro in 1964), Hynek quoted him saying that the fireballs and flying saucers were secret U.S. project, this was being withheld from him, and accused Hynek of being part of the cover-up.

What has certainly NOT been established is that he had anything to do with Roswell. But I have written about all this before.

Yes you have, but with misinformation. You claimed only CIC agent Rickett made the claim, but this is false. Besides Rickett was La Paz's later grad student Boyd Wettlaufer, who became a well-known Canadian archeologist. Also Earl Zimmerman corroborated Rickett's story in detail. To quote from his affidavit:

http://roswellproof.com/zimmerman.html

"While stationed at RAAF, I moonlighted as a bartender in the base officer's club. During the summer of 1947, I heard many rumors about flying saucers in the club and around the base, including something about investigating the discovery of one under the guise of a plane crash investigation...

"In early 1949, after being transferred to OSI in Albuquerque, I worked with Dr. Lincoln LaPaz of the University of New Mexico on an extended project at the university's research station on top of Sandia Peak. We were told the Air Force was concerned about "something" being in the night sky over Los Alamos, [this is La Paz investigating the green fireballs]

"During this project, which lasted for several months, I got to know Dr. LaPaz very well. When I mentioned to him I had been stationed in Roswell during 1947, he told me he had been involved in the investigation of the thing found in the Roswell area that summer. He did not discuss the case in any detail, but he did say he went out with two agents and interviewed sheepherders, ranchers, and others. They told these witnesses they were investigating an aircraft accident. I seem to recall LaPaz also saying they found an area where the surface earth had been turned a light blue and wondering if lightning could cause such an effect.

Note Zimmerman, like Rickett, was clearly distinguishing between La Paz's investigation into the green fireballs from his earlier one into Roswell.

Part 2What is equally certain is that if he had been so involved, he would have produced literally volumes of papers on it and that these papers would still be extant. He produced lots of official reports on the green fireballs; he produced some on the Norton meteorite. These are all available for the public.

The Norton meteorite was never classified (except maybe at the very beginning before La Paz deemed it definitely a meteor bolide), so to throw it in here is a strawman argument. The green fireballs WERE classified for many years, though La Paz would often speak out-of-school as to the artificial origins. While the documents were classified, you would NOT have been able to review them unless you obtained the proper security clearance.

So where is all the stuff he produced on Roswell? Any ideas, Kevin or David? Or are we forced to the dreadful (to you) conclusion that he produced nothing on Roswell because he was, quite simply, not involved with the case?

According to "Kevin or David", Roswell was a far more explosive event and therefore remains highly classified.

CDA exhibits his usual naivete about top secret material, which the government can keep classified literally forever if they choose. You can file all the FOIA requests you want, but you will never get at it.

If La Paz kept top-secret material in his personal files, they would still be gone through upon his death and "cleaned up". This is SOP for anyone who works with top-secret material.

E.g., I went through the personal files of Dr. Louis Alverez at the U.C. Berkeley Bancroft Library, since Alverez was rumored to have had something to do with crash retrievals. I didn't find anything relevant (except for two minor UFO-related documents, one from Menzel concerning Alverez's participation in the Robertson Panel), but did find one set of files (I think from 1955) had been removed after his death because they were still classified. It doesn't say what the subject matter was--could have been anything.

Wilbert Smith hid his classified papers on his UFO research for the Canadian government, telling his wife that when he died they would be going through his papers and removing sensitive material. He didn't want his UFO research to be lost during such a classification review.

CDA "Does anyone still take this old report seriously? Yes, perhaps Keyhoe did at the time, with his alleged 'Pentagon sources' Yes, perhaps Frank Edwards did. Big deal!"

From a news story datelined Albuquerque (AP) March 4, 1954

"The Armed Forces are sponsoring a skysweeping search for tiny earth moons...If they exist -- and scientists say the have reason to believe they do...

La Paz...feels that the fireball showers and meteors which blaze through the earth's atmosphere may provide a clue as to the existence of the undiscovered earth moons.

It's thought that some of the meteors which blaze into the earth's air may be fragments of these tiny moons..."

La Paz said such satellites might be a source of the green fireballs. But the given reason for the search was, if they exist, to investigate their use as bases for interplanetary exploration -- space stations.

I'll leave to meteorologists to say whether or not this was credible science in 1954. It sounds odd to me and could be a cover story for the news media.

La Paz advocated a US space station in earth orbit program before the Soviets did it, reasoning that the earth could be dominated from such stations.

The question of 'Top Secret' material regarding things like Roswell is purely hypothetical. Since none of this has ever been discovered, how can we tell if it was 'Top secret' or not? Naturally the ETHers will tell us it is all TS, but can it really still be after 63 years?

Skeptics like me regard this argument as a 'cop out'. In other words, if you cannot locate the relevant proof of an important but highly disputed event, it must, perforce, still be under wraps.

A very weak excuse if carried too far, which is what the Roswell ET proponents are doing.

CDA, if no one requests an investigation, there will not be one. That may have happened with Roswell. There was internal reporting, I'm sure...Marcel to Blanchard to Ramey to Vandenberg, but that is not an investigation that will generate a report.

Cavitt in his statement accompanying his interview with Weaver states

"I did not make a report of this incident to my headquarters since I felt that the recovery of a weatherballoon was not a big deal that did not merit a written report"

If it was a balloon, though, I think those putting out that it was a flying disk did merit reporting on, the Commanding Officer, the Intelligence Officer, and the Public Information Officer (and whatever civilians were supporting their story). But nobody asked him about that.Nobody asks, nobody tells...even to lie about it.

Cavitt:

"What Marcel did with this material at the time was unknown to me, although I know now from reading about this incident in numerous books..."

Apparently, Cavitt didn't read newspapers or listen to radio on July 8 and 9 1947.

Considering that at the same time as the Roswell incident, the air force was investigating obvious hoaxes (a hubcap or pie pan with a radio tube taped in it, for example), one has to wonder why Roswell was any different. Apparently, it didn't deserve the same attention as a couple of kids' pranking.

"Note Zimmerman, like Rickett, was clearly distinguishing between La Paz's investigation into the green fireballs from his earlier one into Roswell."

Karl Pflock, in his book p.114, says that his conversations with Zimmerman, together with Robert Todd's own correspondence with Zimmerman, "leaves little doubt that this [i.e. the green fireball hunt] was the incident Zimmerman was told about by LaPaz".

LaPaz used a standard ploy of telling those he interviewed on a fireball search that he was partaking in an aircraft accident investigation. He did this to deter competition from amateur meteorite hunters.

Remember also that Rickett had LaPaz first getting involved with Roswell no less than TWO MONTHS after the 'crash', a ridiculous idea that discredits the rest of his testimony.

Whatever Zimmerman said in his 1993 affidavit, it is far from clear that LaPaz ever participated in the Roswell crash. In fact, it is clear that Zimmerman, like Rickett, is confusing the two incidents. After 46 years, this is not surprising.

Anyone who insists otherwise should produce hard evidence, i.e. documents, to show Zimmerman (and Rickett) was involved in both.

The long conference at Los Alamos, in which LaPaz did by far the most of the talking, but never once mentioned Roswell, is the best indicator that he was not involved with it.

Don:You are reinforcing the idea that Cavitt thought the incident trivial and unimportant. Hence he took it no further. But that is not what the ETHers insist happened. They insist Cavitt lied in places, to Weaver and others.

If Cavitt did not bother to read the newspapers or listen to the broadcasts, this is further evidence that he decided the incident had little or no value.

Come to think of it, Marcel did not bother either, did he (as far as we know)?

CDA, what I am saying is that Cavitt would have to have reported to "my headquarters" no matter what the object was. But he is not lying when he says he wouldn't report on a popped weather balloon. And he didn't have an opportunity to lie, or not, about making reports on related subjects such as the officers who published stories about the "weather balloon" being a flying disk, if, as Cavitt maintained, that is what he thought the object was.

If Cavitt believed it was a balloon (and instrument) why didn't Cavitt inform Marcel or Blanchard that the object was just a bleepin' balloon. One reason would be that Cavitt lied about it being a balloon and a "black box". But if Cavitt believed it was a balloon, he would have a reason for not arguing with them, as he will be reporting on what appears to him to be officers with security-sensitive access and information acting delusional.

Another possibility that those more familiar with the CIC back then than I am might clarify is Cavitt's statement that upon graduating CIC School he was initially assigned to the RAAF. Does this mean it was his first assignment? The RAAF is not just any old air field. It is central to the emerging air force identity and doctrine.

He says this was late June or early July. So, perhaps he is 'green' and he has been dropped into an ongoing situation, as the story is told the object is known about either since "some time last week" or "three weeks ago". If the officers at the RAAF could not identify it, and since we know Mac Brazel couldn't, it is likely those locals who saw it or who heard about it were equally flummoxed (aka, the rumors).

Cavitt, if newly minted, just arrived on base, and having to get up to speed about an ongoing 'incident' might just not have known much about it before Ramey spake and the story died. Maybe Rickett was de facto, not de jure, 'in charge'.

This non-event in 1947 makes the UFO proponents still defending the case. They are 2 museums now in Roswell and $$$.

The second one (museum) have as first "predident" Walter Haut, and was co-founded with Glenn Dennis (a supra serious witness!), Haut changed his affidavits, from "there is nothing" to "I have seen all of the myth"!

Huuuu, first he was affraid by the supra cover-up operation; 2 years later, he was not, cause the museum and $$$$! Because I'm in charge in Roswell new museum! The supra-super-mega cover-up was Chess and mat, so they are idiots..

Now, his daughter is President of the second Roswell museum.

That's Roswell ! An UFO best case. That's ufology!

I remember the supra investigator called Donald R. Schmitt, abusing false diplome(s) and making Roswell's supra-serious investigations. Still and again, and now too.

I wrote:"Note Zimmerman, like Rickett, was clearly distinguishing between La Paz's investigation into the green fireballs from his earlier one into Roswell."

cda responds:Karl Pflock, in his book p.114, says that his conversations with Zimmerman, together with Robert Todd's own correspondence with Zimmerman, "leaves little doubt that this [i.e. the green fireball hunt] was the incident Zimmerman was told about by LaPaz".

And anything Karl Pflock asserts or believes automatically becomes hard fact, right cda? Wasn't this the same Karl Pflock who worked for the CIA and DOD and who a decade before was involved with two conmen in a cattle mutilation hoax in order to get a book deal, and going under the pseudonym of Kurt Peters? That Karl Pflock? You can take any of his assertions to the bank.

Back to Zimmerman and Rickett. Zimmerman in his affidavit clearly states he was stationed at Roswell in 1947 when he first heard about the investigation into the discovery of a saucer under the guise of a plane crash. Then he adds that two years later he had been transferred to OSI in Albuquerque and worked with La Paz on the green fireballs, where La Paz told him about also investigating Roswell, again under the guise of a plane crash, going around with "two agents" and talking to people in the area. This is exactly the same story Rickett independently told, except Rickett named himself as one of the agents accompanying La Paz. (Incidentally, the green fireball investigations involved far more than two agents, so again Rickett was referencing something completely different from the green fireballs.)

Zimmerman also told a very similar story as Rickett of La Paz during the Roswell investigation finding an area where the earth had been turned a blue shade, though Rickett added the sand had been fused. Rickett said La Paz thought this had been a spot where the troubled ET Roswell craft had landed shortly before finally exploding over the Foster Ranch.

LaPaz used a standard ploy of telling those he interviewed on a fireball search that he was partaking in an aircraft accident investigation. He did this to deter competition from amateur meteorite hunters.

So why couldn't he use the same plausible cover story while investigating Roswell--huh?

Remember also that Rickett had LaPaz first getting involved with Roswell no less than TWO MONTHS after the 'crash', a ridiculous idea that discredits the rest of his testimony.

Why is this "ridiculous"? Why does this "discredit" the rest of the testimony? Apparently only because cda believes it and asserts it as fact, the same tactic as Pflock.

Whatever Zimmerman said in his 1993 affidavit, it is far from clear that LaPaz ever participated in the Roswell crash. In fact, it is clear that Zimmerman, like Rickett, is confusing the two incidents. After 46 years, this is not surprising.

What is not surprising is cda using another argument by assertion. cda believes it, therefore it becomes fact.

Back on planet Earth, it is far from “clear”, in fact I would say very unlikely, that two independent witnesses could be "confused" in identical ways.

Further this also leaves out La Paz's student, Boyd Wettlaufer, who likewise said La Paz told him about Roswell. And like Rickett, Wettlaufer reported La Paz thought it was an extraterrestrial craft that got into trouble and crashed. But in DebunkerLand, it becomes crystal clear that Wettlaufer must also be "confusing" Roswell with the green fireballs because, well they just know Roswell was nothing, therefore witnesses who say otherwise, scores of them, are necessarily “confused”, lying, or “contaminated”. In this way, all inconvenient testimony can be rationalized away. Such is the psychological denial mechanism.

2nd part response to cda:Anyone who insists otherwise should produce hard evidence, i.e. documents, to show Zimmerman (and Rickett) was involved in both.

I've been demanding a far simpler task of debunkers who insists Roswell was caused by Mogul Flight #4: show us the Mogul documents that prove that there ever was a Flight #4.

That should be very easy, since Mogul is completely declassified. But what the documents REALLY show is that the alleged #4 was "canceled" because of cloudy weather and there is a gap in the numbered Mogul flights showing no #4, just like there was no Mogul Flights #2, #3, and #9, flights that also NEVER got off the ground.

Another very simple demand is show us the alleged "Mogul flower tape" in the Fort Worth photos, you know, the supposed "proof" that the radar target in those photos came from Mogul. I've been challenging Gilles F. with that one, and he never responds.

The long conference at Los Alamos, in which LaPaz did by far the most of the talking, but never once mentioned Roswell, is the best indicator that he was not involved with it.

Yet another bogus argument by assertion. But, again, in the REAL world of high classification with accompanying compartmentalization, if you ain't cleared to hear about it, you don't hear it, unless somebody is careless or deliberately leaking information.

Speaking of leaked TS information, last night, by pure chance, I bumped into Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame, or infamy (depending on POV). When he was testifying before Congress ~35 years ago, he mentioned highly classified reading rooms, guarded vaults in the Pentagon where the nation's greatest secrets were kept, information he said was classified “above top secret". (Note to anal, excessively literal skeptics: Yes, we all know there is no official "above" top secret classification, but we also all know what Ellsberg meant. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara likewise used the same unofficial ATS term as did Barry Goldwater, Goldwater referencing alien artifacts kept at Wright-Patterson. They’re talking about highly compartmentalized, top secret information that very few people are ever cleared to see.)

So I asked Ellsberg if any of those vaults might relate to UFOs? Well he didn't know, he said. The ones he had access to did not.

But then he added (cda should take note) that didn't really prove anything because everything was so compartmentalized.

This has been pointed out to cda a thousand times, including by Kevin, and he still acts like he doesn't get it. But the fact is unless everyone, and I mean everyone, at the green fireball conference was cleared to hear about Roswell, then La Paz would never raise the subject without breaking a security oath. And even if everyone was cleared, the topic might still never be broached, because they were discussing green fireballs, not Roswell.

Yes, the idea of first involving LaPaz two months after the 'crash' is preposterous and DOES discredit Rickett's remaining testimony.

By September all the debris would have cleared up and the site was virtually empty. So what on earth (or off it) was the purpose of involving LaPaz, a meteorite expert and meteorite hunter, at this point? Answer: none whatever.

Rickett is totally confused. DR ought to accept and realise this and cease promoting Rickett and LaPaz as genuine witnesses to the Roswell events. I dealt with all this in a 1991 issue of 'Orbiter' magazine.

DR should also cease invoking this thesis of all the papers still being 'Top Secret' after 63 years. Both he and Kevin know they will never find any hard evidence for Roswellso they still promote the dotty idea that it is all hidden away in vaults. What were the GAO contracted to do anyway, look for Santa Claus?

Oh, and by the way, the fact that Karl Pflock was once an employee of the CIA and DOD has nothing to do with it. Absolutely zilch.

CDA "What were the GAO contracted to do anyway, look for Santa Claus?"

They might as well have.

"The "Roswell Incident" refers to an event that supposedly happened in July, 1947 wherein the Army Air Forces (AAF) allegedly recovered remains of a crashed "flying disc" near Roswell, New Mexico. In February 1994, the General Accounting Office (GAO)...initiated an audit to attempt to locate records of such an incident..."

Executive Summary, Report of the Air Force Research Regarding the "Roswell Incident"

Well, you get what you ask for, and nothing else about anything else, whether in the form of truth or as lies.

Since it is extremely unlikely such records were ever made, especially if the object were a "crashed "flying disc"", this was the wrong question to ask. And those who would ask such a question got the answer they deserved: Mogul.

What wasn't asked, and therefore not answered, was: How and why did the Army Air Force publicly claim it was in possession of a flying disc?

In order to get to the King, one must go through the Pawns.

If it was some sort of balloon device, there would be no reason to write a report about it, just a commonplace day-entry. If it were a "crashed flying disc" then that is definitely a reason not to order an official report, which would create a discoverable paper-trail.

"Don't ask, don't tell" is a longstanding policy regarding things not associated with sexual orientation in the military and the intelligence services, and likely goes as far back at least to the Romans.

Are you telling us that if only a balloon (with radar target) was recovered no report on it would have been made?

Are you also telling us that even if a genuine 'flying disc' had been found then "that is definitely a reason not to order an official report, which would create a discoverable paper-trail"?

I am afraid I simply do not follow you. You are saying that no matter what had been found, nothing in writing was produced, or would have been produced. Even if it was probably the greatest scientific discovery of all time!

Or are you saying that there IS a true paper trail of this discovery but it had to to covered up, hence no official report by the USAF was written?

It sounds highly implausible to me.

What happened to all the hardware and bodies? Any ideas?

Let me put this to you: What question do you think should have been put to the GAO in order that they could uncover all the relevant hard evidence of this ET 'crash' (assuming it happened)?

You are employing semantics here, rather than admitting no such evidence exists.

CDA "I am afraid I simply do not follow you. You are saying that no matter what had been found, nothing in writing was produced, or would have been produced."

There are plenty of situations that would result in a report. There are even specific forms for the routine ones (such as a crash landing -- "Report ofAircraft Accident Form 16", in that era I think).

Recovering a balloon from someone's property would be reported because a civilian complaint about army property littering their property may have legal implications. So, as I wrote above, at least an entry in the day book.

The absence of any record is suspicious because we know something happened, and if what happened was something normal, there would be a report, even if it were a weather balloon and kite if it involved civilians and property damage (in this case, the sheep, I guess).

"Even if it was probably the greatest scientific discovery of all time!"

Especially if. I disagree with ET advocates who believe there would have to be an official report of an investigation, top secret or otherwise.

You seem to think that official investigations and reports just happen, like the weather. They do not. Nobody is charged with monitoring and recording everything that happens. There is no such MOS.

"You are employing semantics here, rather than admitting no such evidence exists."

No. I am saying it is extremely unlikely such a report was written.

"Let me put this to you: What question do you think should have been put to the GAO in order that they could uncover all the relevant hard evidence of this ET 'crash' (assuming it happened)?"

The problem with investigations of Roswell made by ufologists (including skeptics) is their intense focus on exactly the information that cannot be got. That's why their evidence is all circumstantial, why it depends on witness statements.

I already wrote what I think the question ought to have been.

If the RAAF hadn't made a public announcement that they had a flying disc in their possession we would not be having this conversation, Schiff would have had no issue to bring to the GAO, and Kevin might be a famous sf writer, and Friedman working in the nuclear industry rather than investigating Roswell. The only thing that might be known about it would be an uncorroboratable comment by Frank Edwards, if that.

It would have been interesting to see how the AF would have handled that. Besides Cavitt, would they have interviewed Haut? Rickett? And anyone else who might have been involved and still alive then, such as those among the men in the RAAF IO?

I think we would have learned a lot, and more useful information than Mogul and crash test dummy stuff.

I don't know there were any such. From 1947 the only thing I can glean about the object or materials are those few times Mac Brazel was formally quoted.

From the UP: "Marcel...reportedly told Brazel, the finder of the object, that "it has nothing to do with army or navy so far as I can tell."

It is unlikely this statement was made up by either Brazel or the reporter because it is very unlikely they would know Marcel had experience with the Navy. The statement implies it wasn't a US civilian craft, as well. In July 1947, it was still a credible hypothesis the disks were Soviet. Maybe that was on Marcel's mind.

Brazel was hesitant to report the object or materials because he was embarrassed that he couldn't identify it. This implies that he thought he ought to have known what it was -- the materials were "like" known things only with "strangeness".

The witness era testimony supports this. Brazel, we are told, attempted to get his neighbors interested and when they could not visit him, he took materials around to them, probably to get a clue from someone else about it might be. All of the witnesses who say they handled the materials had a similar reaction, familiar, "like" something known, only not something known.

I don't care to tread too deeply into witness era testimony unless it corroborates what little is known from 1947, but I'll take a further step in that direction and point out the besides the familiar but not familiar reaction, there appears to be a fascination with the materials. Brazel doesn't quickly deal with it, but carries some of it around soliciting the opinions of his peers. Marcel shows the stuff to his family. Bill Brazel collects fragments he keeps in a cigar box. And Haut, at the end, says he kept a piece on his desk. Even the Cavitts report the attempt to burn a piece at a barbecue.

Other witnesses, of course, said a saucer crashed and there were aliens, but since there was nothing like that mentioned in 1947, it is not on my plate.

Actually, it was in response to a skeptic on usenet that I got started on this. He said he wouldn't discuss the matter anymore unless the discussion was kept to what was written in 1947 and I obliged him.

Robert Todd have written about the "missing" records in one his famous "The Cowflop Quarterly" (number 5, july 1996).

He concluded IF documents have existed about the recovery balloons and radar targets in Roswell, they should be PROBABLY in one or the two following box archives, which contained Air Material Command correspondances:

- The 000- Flying Discs, Grudge-Sign 1947-1950.

- MX 1011 - Rockfish Mogul projects acoustical research (1946 -1950).

But, as you probably know, such archives (as many others) located at the 6th floor vault in the "military personnal record center" in St Louis have been destroyed in the big fire occuring in 1973.

It was a pity for Todd, as it is probably for our matter. Of course, conspirationists have taken this accident to claim the standard "the documents have been destroyed" in the super mega cover-up...

cda wrote:Yes, the idea of first involving LaPaz two months after the 'crash' is preposterous and DOES discredit Rickett's remaining testimony.

By September all the debris would have cleared up and the site was virtually empty. So what on earth (or off it) was the purpose of involving LaPaz, a meteorite expert and meteorite hunter, at this point? Answer: none whatever.

Maybe cda should pay attention to what Rickett actually had to say instead of inventing more strawman arguments. According to Rickett, La Paz was brought in by the military to try to determine the trajectory of the crash object, NOT examine the object or debris. Thus whether he got involved 2 minutes or 2 months after the debris was cleaned up is indeed totally irrelevant.

Figuring out a trajectory would have EVERYTHING to do with La Paz being an expert meteorite hunter, since La Paz's main technique was to interview eyewitnesses on site and get directional information from them. Get enough eyewitnesses like this spread out over a wide enough area and you can quite accurately triangulate a trajectory.

Of course, the exact same techniques were also used by La Paz during the green fireball investigations to determine flight characteristics (such as altitude and speed) and try to track down fragments of whatever was causing the fireballs by first figuring out trajectories from eyewitness reports. Military intelligence and counterintelligence was very definitely treating the green fireballs as UFO phenomena and the whole matter was very highly classified at the time. As the FBI memo said Jan. 31, 1949, AF and Army intelligence had informed them that the flying saucers and fireballs were classified TOP SECRET.

The FBI “UFOs are Top Secret” briefing was the day after the great green fireball seen over a large area of New Mexico and west Texas. A helluva more agents than just Cavitt and Rickett helped La Paz investigate that incident. But according to CDA (mouthing Pflock), it was nothing but “confusion” by Rickett between the green fireball investigations and the alleged Roswell investigation using only 2 agents. Remarkably, corroborating witness Ed Zimmerman told the exact same “confused” story of the 2 agents helping La Paz with Roswell, which he said was told to him by La Paz while Zimmerman was assisting him with his green fireball investigation. La Paz’s student Boyd Wettlaufer likewise confirmed La Paz telling him about investigating Roswell.

Rickett is totally confused. DR ought to accept and realise this and cease promoting Rickett and LaPaz as genuine witnesses to the Roswell events. I dealt with all this in a 1991 issue of 'Orbiter' magazine.

No doubt the Orbiter magazine article is the usual CDA argument that it can’t be so because CDA asserts it as not so.

I’m not “promoting” anything, but pointing out we know of at least 2 more witnesses besides Rickett who have tied La Paz to Roswell. However, CDA is definitely promoting the idea that any testimony he doesn’t like is absolutely “witness confusion”, just because he says so, or somebody like Pflock (“our debunker”) says so.

Don:I am glad you doubt there were any hardware or bodies. This implies you do not go along with the ET brigade. Better watch out: Kevin, David Rudiak and plenty of others are gunning for you.

But presumably you agree that if the thing really was ET and the military and the scientists of the time ascertained this, there would indeed be truckfuls of documents plus some hardware & bodies available to view. Or are you one of those who insist it would still be stashed away, hidden from the never-to-be-informed Joe Public.

I still wonder if the original press release was prompted by one of two things: the desire for publicity for RAAF, and the financial reward offered for a genuine 'flying disc'. Either is possible.

Part 1Don wrote:"You seem to think that official investigations and reports just happen, like the weather. They do not. Nobody is charged with monitoring and recording everything that happens. There is no such MOS. ...I am saying it is extremely unlikely such a report was written."

Don, I totally disagree with you here. This was not some nothing local event like the base barbecue. It was an official military press release sent out over the national news wires about having one of the "flying discs" that had been all over the newspapers the last few days. And it didn't come from some podunk Army outpost in Bolivia. It came from the one and only atomic bomber base in the world.

The press release set off a media firestorm. The Pentagon was inundated with phone calls, tying them up in knots for the rest of the day. Even the acting AAF Chief of Staff Vandenberg had his day disrupted, reported dropping into the AAF press room to deal with the public relations crisis and directing calls to Roswell and Fort Worth.

Over in Fort Worth, Gen. Ramey's command was likewise being inundated with phone calls, and Ramey, as we all know, also had to deal with it. As reported back then, Ramey was on the phone to the Pentagon, on the phone with Wright Field, on the phone with reporters, dealing with the FBI, and then did his debunking photo shoot with his singular weather balloon and radar target, followed by more debunkery over a FW radio station.

The point is there was going to be a number of very POed commanding officers wondering what the hell went wrong at their atomic bomber base. How could intelligence and senior staff there possibly confuse flimsy materials as coming from the reported supersonic saucers? Why would base command put out such an inflammatory press release about having a flying disc when all they had was an obvious weather balloon of some kind? Why wasn't such an obviously important press release cleared from the top? Didn't they know about chain of command?

This is the "Roswell was staffed by drooling idiot senior officers" hypothesis that the debunkers put forth. At the very least, there would have been some sort of inquiry into what happened and some sort of base house cleaning would have taken place. I would think some of those responsible would indeed have been transferred to some outpost in Bolivia and had there careers ruined. But none of this happened.

In the "Roswell was a crashed flying saucer" scenario, there was also going to be reports written to document what happened. These would be very highly classified. Rickett described one such CIC report written by Cavitt that Marcel tried to get a hold of when he returned from Fort Worth. Marcel tried to pull rank to get Cavitt (a friend) to show him the report, but Cavitt said he reported through another chain of command and it was out of his hands.

To give you some idea of how even trivial events were documented, we have FBI files where they sent an obvious hoax disc to Wright Field the following month for analysis, and Wright Field dutifully analyzed it, right down to determining the likely old radio parts it was made from.

But we can't find a scrap of paper from Wright Field about Roswell. The Dallas FBI telegram of July 8 states they were told that their Cincinnati office would be further informed by Wright Field of what they determined. The GAO in 1994 did search for further FBI paperwork on this and turned up nothing. It sounds like the Army told the FBI to take a hike afterward concerning Roswell.

But a dumb hoax disc the following month, and we have multiple pages documenting what happened between the FBI and Wright Field.

Part 2 response to Don:Likewise, Gen. Vandenberg's log of July 7 goes into some detail of him personally dealing with a hoax crashed disc story out of Houston, Vandenberg trying to kill it ASAP. But the next day, there is not a word about Vandenberg dealing with Roswell, a much bigger story, even though he is clearly reported as being involved in the newspapers.

When it came to anything Roswell, it always seems nothing got written down, nothing we can get our hands on anyway. None of this makes any sense unless the whole matter was highly classified and remains that way.

I wrote:When it came to anything Roswell, it always seems nothing got written down, nothing we can get our hands on anyway. None of this makes any sense unless the whole matter was highly classified and remains that way.

In case CDA or someone else claims Roswell was never classified, the Pentagon and Gen. Ramey were saying as much, as reported in some newspaper stories:

"AAF commanders in New Mexico refused to permit the object to be photographed on the grounds that it was 'high level stuff...'" (UP story)

"AAF headquarters later revealed that a 'security lid' has been clamped on all but the sketchiest details of the discovery." (UP story)

"At first they gave the bare details of the finding of the object. Then they clamped a security lid on any further information on grounds that it was 'high level stuff.'" (Washington Post)

"Ramey said he couldn't let anybody look at the thing or photograph it because Washington had clamped a 'security lid' on all but the sketchiest details." (N.Y. PM)

David Rudiak wrote: "I would think some of those responsible would indeed have been transferred to some outpost in Bolivia and had there careers ruined. But none of this happened."

Why? Roswell is a non-event until 1978... I dont see ANY reason to blame or transfer Marcel etc in 1947 or after...

Roswell is a non event for USAF/USAAF: the best proof is that it surfaced in 1978.

If it was in real your chimeria you are cherishing, I ask myself why the few first hand witnesses weren't so much surveyed by your big mega super cover-up magical team....

USAF and secret agencies were unable to follow the few first hand witnesses in order the big secret continues to be so secretly keeped... Conspirationists, like you, can have both. No problemo for your flying saucer (in paper).

A super mechanic from 1947 to today, but a noob mistake? That's ufology and conspirationism concerning Roswell.

In essence, you have both a superb mechanic to keep the secret intact, but an "oups, we have forgoted to follow and spy the few first hand protagonists having seen a ET craft, material and bodies, still alive. Please, pardon us".

Stanton Friedman have passed all the super supra mega walls to keep the secret of all times. Their bad...

I suppose some of your magical team have been transfered in Bolivia, cause Stanton Friedman finding ;)

"I am glad you doubt there were any hardware or bodies. This implies you do not go along with the ET brigade. Better watch out: Kevin, David Rudiak and plenty of others are gunning for you."

I think not. I get along pretty well with ET advocates because I consider the ETH plausible. They've done a lot of the heavy lifting especially about Roswell, and I am grateful for that, despite my criticism that going head-on with looking for ET has led to their not giving attention to other areas I think ought to be investigated in their own right.

"But presumably you agree that if the thing really was ET and the military and the scientists of the time ascertained this, there would indeed be truckfuls of documents plus some hardware & bodies available to view."

No (but note this: both you and David agree here). I think having ET in hand, so to speak (By 'ET' I mean discs with the performance characteristics reported, under the control of ET beings, and the beings) would be buried as deep as possible rather than immediately drilling and autopsying, at least I hope so, with all due regard to 'unintended consequences'.

In 1947 at least, there existed no mechanism for official reporting of an ET crash. So, it is not a matter of finding the right form and filling it out. It would have to be ad hoc and that would require some time. In the meantime, it would be buried deep.

Because of the extraordinary nature of the 'project', I can't accept it would be accomplished through normal means, ie, Top Secret. By saying "above top secret", that is what is meant. So, no, I don't think there ever was a TS report, say, by AMC. Maybe a few AMC people did an analysis, but not as AMC, not as anything "official", not as anything discoverable by any sort of "audit".

You cannot access information if it is not available. And information that is not available might as well not exist.

I'd love to know how LaPaz conducted his interviews with the Roswell eyewitnesses when not a single eyewitness to the object is known or has ever been traced. By this I mean someone who saw it travel IN THE SKY. I'd also like to know how LaPaz ever consented to investigating anything to do with Roswell when he was only brought in 2 months later, AFTER all the debris had been cleared away.

As I said, a preposterous notion.

Was this LaPaz's methodology? You must be kidding!

And even if LaPaz had met any real first-hand witnesses to the thing, whether they saw it on the ground or in the air, they would have been sworn to secrecy by then (so the ETHers constantly tell us) and thus told him nothing. LaPaz had no interest whatever in second-hand witnesses, who would have been useless to him.

The LaPaz involvement gets crazier & crazier the more you examine it.

I have papers co-written by Rickett (Feb 11, 1949) and another by Cavitt (Dec 23, 1948) also two letters from Zimmerman to Robert Todd (both 1994) about his involvement with LaPaz in the fireballs phenomena. These letters came AFTER his affidavit, but still make no mention of Roswell '47. None whatever. I do wonder who interviewed him before his affidavit of Nov 1993. I don't see any mention of Z in LaPaz's documents but maybe I have missed it (my copy is far from clear in places).

Creating an official investigation, and an ET 'project', even if TS, creates opportunities for discovery. In the extraordinary situation of ET, I would expect the 'project' to be moved outside of official bureaucracy to a small group, carefully vetted (and therefore slowly brought on-board as needed).

So, my idea is something akin to "above top secret" without the implication that it is just higher up in the same hierarchy. Instead, I think the project would be moved outside any possible "official" activity.

Nothing is perfect. So, something would be discoverable in theory. Anyway, that's the allure of some hoaxes, I think.

David: "These would be very highly classified. Rickett described one such CIC report written by Cavitt that Marcel tried to get a hold of when he returned from Fort Worth. Marcel tried to pull rank to get Cavitt (a friend) to show him the report, but Cavitt said he reported through another chain of command and it was out of his hands."

I gave consideration above to an internal CIC report, and noted the colorful, even dramatic, history of the CIC in the 1940s. I would not expect the CIC to have been forthcoming even to the President if they didn't want to (and they didn't, it seems).

There are difficulties in both Cavitt's and Marcel's recollections of their relationship, but I think Cavitt would have to have reported at least on the RAAF officers involved. If he did, there are about zero odds of it becoming available, I think.

"we have FBI files where they sent an obvious hoax disc to Wright Field the following month for analysis, and Wright Field dutifully analyzed it, right down to determining the likely old radio parts it was made from."

Yep. I already made that point. Not just the FBI, but the army, too, investigated obvious pranks and hoaxes. I think they had a reason, which I've mentioned -- the suspicion that Soviet agents were encouraging flying saucer reporting and hoaxing. Do you recall one of the July 1947 stories about the "saucer" with hammer and sickle painted on it? Thanks to that one, I sometimes wonder if some of the hoaxes back then were hoaxes of hoaxing. 8-)

Part 1:Gilles F. wrote:Why? Roswell is a non-event until 1978... I dont see ANY reason to blame or transfer Marcel etc in 1947 or after...

Some "nonevent". An official military press release from the highly sensitive atomic bomber base of the Air Force that they had one of the highly mysterious flying discs in their possession. This "nonevent" garnered front page and headline coverage, not only in the U.S., but abroad as well. It completely disrupted the Pentagon, Roswell AAF, and 8th AAF command in Fort Worth for the rest of the day, until ridiculed and debunked by Gen. Ramey and the Pentagon as a commonly used weather balloon. Just to emphasize what a “nonevent” this was and try to kill public interest, the Army and Navy (as officially acknowledged in the newspapers) then followed up in the next few days with an orchestrated debunkery campaign of the saucers and Roswell using ridicule and balloon demonstrations.

But according to Gilles F., nothing at all happened to those responsible because he asserts it to be a "nonevent", though according to him and other debunkers it was all a colossal screw-up by higher officers, the "Roswell AAF was run by blithering idiots" theory. Further, under this theory, AAF command was completely unconcerned that their atomic bombs and bombers were under the command of fools who couldn’t tell obvious balloon materials (such as an actual balloon) from Kenneth Arnold’s supersonic flying saucers and compounded their foolishness by putting out an inflammatory press release alerting the entire world.

Instead of higher brass being at least a little concerned about this, an incompetent like Blanchard was eventually rewarded by becoming a four-star general and second in command of the USAF. Marcel got a promotion to Lt. Col. (in the Reserve) with the recommendation of Blanchard and Dubose, a new commission, a recommendation to attend staff officer training school by Dubose, a boost in his service ratings by Blanchard to “superior”, was called “most outstanding” and “most exemplary” by future AF Chief of Staff Col. John Ryan, “outstanding” by Gen. Ramey, command officer material, and currently irreplaceable to his command when he was being transferred to higher intelligence work, with both the Pentagon and the SAC competing for his services, where he continued to receive “superior” service ratings.

David: "Rickett described one such CIC report written by Cavitt that Marcel tried to get a hold of when he returned from Fort Worth. Marcel tried to pull rank to get Cavitt (a friend) to show him the report, but Cavitt said he reported through another chain of command and it was out of his hands."

Did Marcel say anything about this?

In the reconstructed Pratt interview, Marcel seemed aware of the different 'domains' of the RAAF chain of command and the CIC. He said "I didn't keep any paperwork on CIC agents They didn't belong to me.", although on one matter he said they worked together, vetting new RAAF personnel re the AEC. Marcel says when he got a new personnel file, he passed it to the CIC agents who would investigate, and they together would finalize a report. This, I take it, was to meet the security requirements for being on the atomic base. They weren't internal CIC reports.

Thing is, Marcel says he didn't know Cavitt's first name.

"So I got one of my agents named Cavitt, who, incidentally, we've never been able to find since I don't know his first name."

Yet Cavitt says he and Marcel were very close friends and his wife Mary Cavitt confirms this. Rickett confirms this, I think, because I recall he mentioned it regarding this incident.

The problem there is the Cavitts were new arrivals by their interviews. That was a fast-forming individual and family friendship, which Marcel appears to have forgotten.

If Marcel understood the CIC's domain was a separate thing, why did he attempt to get the report from Cavitt? The obvious reason is that he thought he might be in it, possibly for having shown his family the materials, at which time it was not a big deal but since then, the media and "higher headquarters" had gone ballistic.

So, regarding Rickett's story, coming from a former CIC agent, I'd like to have corroboration for it from a civilian or at least a non-CIC agent. And for the Cavitt's story of their close friendship with the Marcels, I'd like a non-CIC agents' confirmation of it. Did Jesse Jr speak about it?

Part 2:Gilles F. wrote:Roswell is a non event for USAF/USAAF: the best proof is that it surfaced in 1978.

In my opinion, one of the STUPIDEST Roswell debunking arguments ever. First, the statement isn't even true, as the story DID surface now and then well before 1978. Second, since when does some historical event become a "nonevent" merely because it is forgotten, buried or denied for a period of time?

By such fantastic skeptical "logic", the WWII British Enigma decoding program was a "nonevent" because none of the thousands of people involved talked about it for 30 years and most of the physical evidence (such as the computers) had been destroyed to avoid the possibility of any of it falling into Soviet hands.

The illegal and immoral radiation experiments on civilians conducted by the U.S. government in the 1940s and 1950s was another "nonevent" because the U.S. government buried it with classification, then denied and ridiculed the accusations for 50 years until the Clinton administration declassified the material when the story began leaking out in the press.

The CIA violating their charter and employing hundreds of U.S. newsmen was another "nonevent". (This included trying to use the press as part of a covert operation to overthrow the Iranian government in 1953, yet another "nonevent".) This again was all classified and well-buried for about 25 years until the Church committee Senate investigation in 1971 uncovered it and finally forced the truth out.

"Operation Northwood" was yet another "nonevent", a "false-flag" U.S.-sponsored terrorism plan against U.S. citizens and miltary, to be blamed on the Cubans, drawn up by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962 and not declassified for 35 years, and then mostly by accident because a copy survived in Kennedy paper archives. (All copies were supposed to be destroyed). Fortunately the plan was killed by Pres. Kennedy.

On the subject of UFOs, government agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and NSA flat-out lied about not having any UFO-related documents, which had been classified, for 25-30 years, and it took lawsuits to finally shake some of this material loose. But since this material was publicly unavailable for decades, this becomes yet more “nonevents” by superior Gilles F. Skepto-Logic.

As a mentioned only yesterday, I just spoke briefly to Daniel Ellsberg about the Pentagon reading rooms in guarded vaults that hold many of the nation's most important secrets. Even for those high in government, very, very few have clearance to get into any of these, in other words Top Secret with highly restricted access (what Ellsberg called "above top secret"). Ellsberg mentioned some of the ones he did know about or have access to, dealing with various covert operations, Vietnam, electronic intelligence and cryptography, spy satellites, and personal communications between Presidents Kennedy and Johnson with Kruschev. And those were only the ones he knew about. There were many more for which he not only had no clearance to see, but wouldn’t have even known what the subject matter might be.

The highly embarrassing Top-Secret Pentagon Papers that Ellsberg leaked, contained the nation’s dirty little secrets about how we really got into the Vietnam War (including flagrant lying to the public and Congress). If Ellsberg hadn’t leaked them, it might have been more decades before the public found out about it, therefore yet more “nonevents".

Of course I've barely scratched the service of IMPORTANT forgotten or buried historical events that may not surface for decades if ever. Does Gilles F., e.g., think anyone can just walk into those Pentagon vaults and see what is there? But our skeptics still seem to believe that governments are incapable of classifying highly sensitive material and greatly restricting access to it, thus keeping even the existence of it hidden from the public.

Don (Sourcerer) wrote:If Marcel understood the CIC's domain was a separate thing, why did he attempt to get the report from Cavitt? The obvious reason is that he thought he might be in it, possibly for having shown his family the materials, at which time it was not a big deal but since then, the media and "higher headquarters" had gone ballistic.

I seriously doubt Marcel would have mentioned taking the material home and showing his family. Why would he do that?

Remember that Marcel had been gone for over a day to Fort Worth, thus out-of-the-loop as to what had happened at Roswell since he left. According to Rickett, Marcel was interested in finding out just that, what had happened in the meantime, which he thought Cavitt's report would contain.

So, regarding Rickett's story, coming from a former CIC agent, I'd like to have corroboration for it from a civilian or at least a non-CIC agent.

Since Rickett said that only he, Cavitt, and Marcel were there when this confrontation took place, isn't this an unreasonable demand? Rickett was pretty open about what had happened and parts of his story have been corroborated by civilians, e.g. unbendable thin metal, the debris areas being cordoned off by machine-gun-toting guards, or La Paz being involved in investigating Roswell afterward.

So I don't see why this part of his story (Cavitt writing a report) should come under suspicion, or even be considered unlikely. I think a CIC report would necessarily have been written, most likely by Cavitt, being the senior CIC person at the base and one of the principle investigators as to what happened.

And for the Cavitt's story of their close friendship with the Marcels, I'd like a non-CIC agents' confirmation of it. Did Jesse Jr speak about it?

According to Jesse Jr., yes the Cavitt's and his parents were friends. I don't know how close. Maybe they were just friendly colleagues.

I wouldn't put too much in Marcel forgetting Cavitt's first name. I'm not too great at remembering names myself (in fact, a very common memory problem for many people), e.g., forgetting first, last, or both names of people I knew quite well at one time--friends, teachers, fellow students, celebrities, etc.

Thanks, David. It may seem unreasonable, but I haven't read everything available, especially in areas outside of my main interest. Jesse Jr and Mary Cavitt are pretty good corroboration of the friendship. Rickett was aware of it, too. I wonder what Marcel and Cavitt had in common.

Being friends, Marcel might have mentioned showing the debris to his family (or perhaps his wife or Jesse Jr did). Marcel could have just asked Cavitt rather than attempt to pull rank (which he had to have known wouldn't work if it were an internal CIC report). Pulling rank indicates some stress about it that seems overmuch for just wanting to be brought up to speed.

I disagree with Gilles, as well, about Roswell being a non-event. Its public impact may not have lasted long with proper nouns and details remembered and By 1949 one can just barely perceive "Roswell" in news stories about saucers that mention a story "awhile back" about the air force finding a flying saucer "out West" that turned out to be a weather balloon. And, if it is an AP story, a mention of an "eager beaver" PR officer who was responsible.

I think it had impact on the emerging USAF in its internal politics, which includes its attitude towards the flying disks, as well as how the emerging "national security state" and "military industrial complex" would develop, as well as the ideological indoctrination regarding anti-communism/Americanism

Reliable Americans, stable citizens, do not report, do not see, do not believe there are, flying saucers. People who lived in the US in the 1950s know that. I knew that.

By a non-event, I mean that Roswell have provokated no one national/international polemic, interest, discussion, debat, continue excitation, scandal or what you want.

Then I dont see any reason to blame the protagonists in 1947 and the years after. In an historian point of view, Roswell is only a newspapers anecdoct in a particular sociopsychological ambiance.

This event have provokated NOTHING motivating sanction against Blanchard, Marcel, Haut or dunno who other few military protagonists.

You noticed promotions concerning such protagonists: Yes, promotion is standard in military. I'm glad you are discovering it. Dont see the link with Roswell as if Roswell was one the reasons to promote them. Promotion is a "standard" and "common" procedure in military life...

What was "official", is only General Ramey conference press, not the press release.

David Rudiak often compare Roswell with several USA "scandals" or hidden projects. Trinity explosion, Manhattan, U2 and several other examples existed, hidden for monthes, years or sometimes decades. I dont contest it.

BUT when it surfaced, it have been exhumed official, de/classified documents as "hardware" evidences, not only testimonies. Such official documents never deny Trinity, U2, Manhattan etc existed... I have never seen ANY sort of such hardware evidence concerning the Roswell myth. Or ring the bells!

In that point, I liked specialy Tim Printy conclusion in his last SUNlite concerning "Classified documents and Roswell" article, closed to what I think.

Regarding the FACT official documents between the great men whom were in charge of the Flying Saucer matter NEVER mention Roswell:

"I am unaware of any classified documents that denied the existence of U-2 overflights or an atomic bomb was not exploded at Trinity. To lie to the public in order to cover-up a secret is one thing. To lie and refrain from mentioning the [Roswell] crash to each other in multiple classified documents is another."

The comparison of Roswell with Daniel Ellsberg's revelations about Vietnam is a bad one. As I remember, the US govt. were very concerned about Ellsberg's book and tried very hard to have it suppressed - for obvious reasons. No such suppression attempts have ever been made with any of the numerous Roswell books.

I think Roswell should be classed as a very transient event rather than a non-event. It faded from the public view after 24 hours, but it was still an 'event'.

It is not true that "it completely disrupted the Pentagon, Roswell AAF, Ft Worth.... for the rest of the day" as DR says.

Did it really go that far, or is this another gross exaggeration of its effects in 1947? I do wonder how many personnel at RAAF, let alone the Pentagon, even knew it happened.

And if it had not been for that great nuclear physicist Stan Friedman in 1978, the affair would have stayed a 'very transient event' to this day.

As it stands, its effect on the scientific community, in 6 decades, has been zero. Some event!

Gilles "What was "official", is only General Ramey conference press, not the press release."

I guess Roswell advocates should thank you for finally finding an official document. I have to say, your idea of one is far different from mine, so I hope you don't mind my asking why you think the "Ramey press conference" is an official?

Are these from official documents, too?

"AAF commanders in New Mexico refused to permit the object to be photographed on the grounds that it was "high level stuff," although Ramey indicated he was not attaching too great importance to the find pending investigation."

and

"Ramey reported that so far as the A.A.F. investigation could determine, no one had seen the object in the air."

So, you have found an official document and according to your criteria it is likely the above two quotations are from official documents, too.

Notice the evidence there was an official AAF investigation of the Roswell incident underway.

To me, at least, if not to you, the investigation referenced would be official. But, over all these years, I waited for the report of the official investigation to turn up. I had lost hope and even convinced my self there was not, would not have been, an official investigation and Ramey and the AAF had lied about there being one. But, thanks to you, Gilles, I realize it was in front of my eyes all the time.

Gilles "What was "official", is only General Ramey conference press, not the press release."

If it existed, the press release (or, perhaps it should be, press releases) was an official document. We don't have it. What we have is one wire story that purports to quote it in its entirety.

Has the air force ever denied there was such a document? Has the air force ever deigned to mention it?

I haven't read everything, so maybe I haven't got to it yet.

So, by my count we have evidence there were two documents regarding the Roswell incident sourced to the US Army Air force. There may also have been an internal CIC report written by Cavitt. It is not impossible there was one by Rickett and even one by Williams, because at least Rickett was someone else's report, according to Cavitt. So, maybe the same for Williams.

So, we know of five possible official reports on the Roswell incident. Evidence for two from 1947, and evidence for three from the witness era.

Funny thing is, we don't have the report of the investigation Ramey referred to, but some of the "witnesses" describe the investigation with some detail.

For example, the investigators were diligent and proactive. They invited Mac Brazel out to the air field and made him comfortable. They interviewed him thoroughly (it took a while) to make sure the story was got right.

I'm sure Mr Brazel expressed concern about the operation of his ranch during that time. The investigators did their best to oblige him. Knowing that his big concern was the sheep getting into the debris, they thoughtfully cordoned off the site to discourage the sheep and even arranged an army detail to clean up every last bit of it.

They not only collected evidence at the site, they collected evidence from the radio stations and newspapers, copies of the press release, wire stories, and recordings, so that they could be attached to their report.

They extended themselves in proactively investigating whether anyone else had information about the incident, even Brazel's friends and neighbors.

Due to the AAF's deep concerns about saucer hoaxes at the time, they cautioned people not to talk about the incident just in case someone got the idea to play a prank. They were very stern with the children, as they were the ones most likely to hoax -- innocently, of course, but it would distract the investigation if they did.

They were careful not to step on any toes, so they involved the local authorities in their investigation, for example, the county's Sheriff, George Wilcox.

Regarding the document by a certain "Williams" there is one dated 11 February 1949.

It is a report written by 3 people:

Paul L. Ryan of DO 17, Kirtland AFB, and Special Agents Lewis S.Rickett and Jack B.Williams. I have mentioned this before. It had zilch to do with the Roswell crash but DOES refer to Roswell and Artesia, NM in the text. It is to do with green fireball sightings of Jan 30, 1949. Lots of other names appear in it. It is entitled 'Aerial Phenomena'.

Cavitt wrote his own, separate, report on other, similar sightings, in December 1948.

Part 1cda wrote:The comparison of Roswell with Daniel Ellsberg's revelations about Vietnam is a bad one. As I remember, the US govt. were very concerned about Ellsberg's book and tried very hard to have it suppressed - for obvious reasons.

Read your history CDA. It wasn't a "book" but some 7000 pages of classified documents, many of them Top Secret.

No such suppression attempts have ever been made with any of the numerous Roswell books.

Speaking of a bad comparison! Which of the Roswell books tried to leak classified government documents? Instead the books were based primarily on witness testimony, which is easy to deny (done here every day by skeptics).

Ellsberg leaked the actual documents because he knew just his testimony about what was in the documents would be similarly denied and he would have nothing to prove what he said.

A better comparison might be CIA agent Victor Marchetti's tattletale book about CIA covert operations ("The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence"). This didn't leak documents but did reveal many previously unknown illegal CIA activities that Marchetti knew about. This book WAS partially censored by the U.S. government in court (the first such book so censored).

Marchetti's book was one of the events (another being journalist Seymour Hersch's expose in the NY Times in 1974 of CIA covert operations) that led to Sen. Frank Church's 1975 investigation into the CIA (the Church Committee), which for the first time publicly revealed the extent of some of the CIA's illegal activities. This included assassination of foreign leaders, subversion of foreign governments, and subversion of the American press by putting hundreds of them on the CIA payroll.

But by skeptical "logic", until these activities were actually exposed and officially endorsed as real by Congressional investigation, they were all "nonevents", which we all know (wink-wink) in SkeptoSpeak means never happened, unimportant, or grossly exaggerated.

Much of the Church Committee investigation was done behind closed doors and was itself classified. 50,000 pages were declassified in 1992, but much of what the Church Committee discovered still remains classified. Whatever secrets about the CIA remain undisclosed in those classified documents by Gilles F.-ian proclamation become historical "nonevents" because nobody talks about them for decades.

I think Roswell should be classed as a very transient event rather than a non-event. It faded from the public view after 24 hours, but it was still an 'event'.

Part 2cda wrote:It is not true that "it completely disrupted the Pentagon, Roswell AAF, Ft Worth.... for the rest of the day" as DR says.

Based on what--you're usual say-so? I'm basing my statement on both press stories and later eyewitness testimony about how phones were ringing off the hook the rest of the day in Roswell. This is also corroborated by the news stories back then, such as the Roswell Morning Dispatch writing July 9 that "the entire U. S. and England seethed with curiosity over the report, and the Roswell telephone company was busy handling calls from every city in this country and several from across the sea... [As soon as the news story was released] the Roswell Morning Dispatch began receiving telephone calls from newspapers all over the United States.

AP, the Washington Post, the S.F. Examiner, etc. also spoke of phone lines into Roswell and/or N.M. and/or the Pentagon being jammed or clogged. E.g., the Examiner wrote:

"Roswell's announcement sent high brass from coast to coast scurrying to telephones for more information. PHONE JAMMED --- Lt. Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, deputy chief of the AAF, hurried to the AAF press section in Washington and personally took charge as newspapers and wire services clamored for details."

AP reported, "General Ramey spoke over a Fort Worth radio station after his headquarters was flooded with queries concerning the object".

Among those phone calls to Ramey was the S.F. Examiner, the reporter (who knew Ramey) claiming to be the first to reach him. Ramey told him it was a weather balloon and radar reflector, long before weather officer Newton was called in to make the ID official.

Did it really go that far, or is this another gross exaggeration of its effects in 1947? I do wonder how many personnel at RAAF, let alone the Pentagon, even knew it happened.

Again your statement based on what--your psychic abilities? You think a few of them might at least read the newspapers or listen to the radio?

Here's another clue CDA. The newspapers reported two C/O Generals having to take charge, namely AAF acting Chief of Staff Vandenberg at the Pentagon and 8th AAF chief Ramey in Fort Worth. True news "nonevents" get handled by low-level flunkees like public information officers. The big cheeses only get involved when things get out of hand.

Leading up to Roswell, three days before when Vandenberg was in Dallas, he was quoted saying that the Pentagon had already received "thousands" of inquiries about the flying discs. Do you think an official military press release saying they actually had one might not generate a few thousand more?

That's exactly what happened, according to the newspaper accounts, the Pentagon, Ramey's command, and Roswell being flooded with calls from reporters and news agencies seeking more information.

On July 8 Roswell stories datelined Washington, reported by both the AP and UP have General Ramey stating that there was an "AAF investigation" of the Roswell incident underway.

Setting aside for this exercise whether Ramey is telling a white lie to get the press off his back and to have something to say when he had nothing to say to them, what was this investigation about?

Both skeptics and advocates assume what would be investigated is the flying disc at Wright (Gilles appears to think the investigation was calling in WO Newton and having a "press conference" about it).

But the extremely meagre evidence we have indicates something else.

"Ramey reported that so far as the A.A.F. investigation could determine, no one had seen the object in the air."

This is not information that could have come from Newton or Wright. The AAF investigation is in Lincoln and Chaves counties, New Mexico. People are being interviewed and none, so far, said they had seen the object in the air.

Corroborating Ramey's statement that there was an investigation (that interviewed 'witnesses') are the stories told by residents decades later (and, as well, General Ramey's statement corroborates the residents').

The issue being debated here is whether there was or is an "official" report made of an AAF investigation -- again under the assumption that the investigation was of the flying disk itself. I think the Air Force encourages this, happy enough to produce reams of "official" documents about Mogul and crash test dummies, but they have nothing to say about the RAAF press release or anything about civilians. Not a peep.

Roswell was not a military UFO case and should not be treated as one. It was and is a civilian case.

It is very likely that the investigation was conducted by the CIC. Whether or not Ramey or his superiors requested a report from the CIC, I don't know. If they did, I don't know how or if the CIC would have complied. They had their own agenda, and could be stubborn about it.

Whatever, if anything, was investigated (analysed is better) at Wright, it is not the AAF investigation Ramey referred to.

Look at Vandenberg's daily logs as given in THE ROSWELL REPORT issued by the USAF. These show that it was on July 7 that Vandenberg had to deal with a 'flying disc' report (intermittently from 1 pm), which turned out to be just a prank, from Houston, Texas. Described as a "cock and bull story".

As for July 8, the day everybody & everything supposedly went mad at the Pentagon and elsewhere, there is absolutely NOTHING about the 'discs' in Vandenberg's logs. Nothing for July 9 either.

And meanwhile Gen Spaatz was still on his fishing holiday.

But then there is that worrying gap (!) between 6.20pm on July 8 and 8.30AM on July 9 when nothing is logged. Obviously this is the period where all the hush-hush meetings and activity took place and which was expunged from the logs. The mind boggles at what went on during those 14 hours.

The part of The USAF's Roswell Report that interests me (besides the Cavitt interview) is a small section:

"THE ”ROSWELL INCIDENT‘‘-WHAT WAS ORIGINALLY REPORTED IN 1947"

The Report chose to use the stories published in the Roswell Daily Record (RDR). Those stories were not published nationally (one story noted was actually the AP story out of Fort Worth, and the headline story in the July 9 edition of the RDR).

On the one hand, it might seem diligent to get the local version, but the RDR story is structurally different from the wire story versions in the national news. The AP version is the only one that purports to have a transcription of the complete RAAF press release, which would make it the best candidate for the Report. By going with the local paper, the Report neatly avoids the press release issue.

The persons named in the RDR version were all dead, but both Walter Haut and George Walsh, mentioned in the AP story were still alive and kicking. Another reason to not report on the most complete version.

An interesting line in the Report

"Brazel subsequently went to Roswell on July 7 and contacted the Sheriff, whoapparently notified Major Marcel."

Actually it is not apparent in the RDR story because how the RAAF was notified of the rancher's discovery, is not in the RDR.But it is, at least, apparent in the AP and UP versions. The AP has Wilcox 'under erasure' so to speak: "the sheriff's office, who notified", and UP had "Sheriff Wilson".

All three versions glitch at the critical moment when the flying disk is transferred from the civilian to the military domain.

I was most curious about a statement in Earl Zimmerman's affidavit, noted by David Rudiak about halfway in this comment thread:

[Re. http://roswellproof.com/zimmerman.html]

""During this project, which lasted for several months, I got to know Dr. LaPaz very well. When I mentioned to him I had been stationed in Roswell during 1947, he told me he had been involved in the investigation of the thing found in the Roswell area that summer. He did not discuss the case in any detail, but he did say he went out with two agents and interviewed sheepherders, ranchers, and others. They told these witnesses they were investigating an aircraft accident. I seem to recall LaPaz also saying they found an area where the surface earth had been turned a light blue and wondering if lightning could cause such an effect."

[italic/bold emphasis added]

I wonder if the "thing" LaPaz was investigating near Roswell might not have been either the site of the debris field or the alleged location of a crashed disk, but rather might have been this oxidized or burned area that apparently displayed this bluish glassy sheen, instead. Anyone care to comment on that possible scenario?

The reason I ask is that LaPaz, being mostly involved in meteoric issues, might have been investigating what caused this uniquely unusual "bluish glassy" area as a potential consequence of a meteoric impact site, even though it seems no meteorite fragments were found at the location in question.

Has anyone else ever heard of a large oxidized or "burned" area where no meteorite fragments were found, yet some seemingly extraterrestrial source caused such an effect? It would seem natural for someone like Dr. LaPaz to be involved in any such investigation, wouldn't it?

I've read a few other accounts online about this "swimming pool blue colored" area that was discovered in proximity to Roswell, and shortly after the separate (?) incident on the farm Brazel was caretaker of, and for some reason I'm intrigued by what might possibly caused a large, roughly circular area to be turned into displaying a bluish hue, with underlying glassy effect shown.

I think this, perhaps because of the conjunction in time and place to the major incident Brazel and Marcel were involved in that caused Blanchard to direct Haut to issue the famous press release about a crashed disk, has been overlooked.

Could this bluish area have had more significance, especially to a meteor scientist like LaPaz, and could it have actually been what LaPaz was referring to when the question of what he was looking into near Roswell was raised? What could have caused this bluish, non-fragmented area? It seems that high heat would have to have been involved, and that LaPaz floated the question or speculation that it could have been caused by lightning, but it seems this was not seriously considered as likely, given the nature of what he apparently may have concluded about this bluish area.

Does anyone have any info or documentation about this bluish area, or any data still extant of LaPaz's investigation of it? It seems to have all gotten lost in the "shuffle" around the Roswell incident itself, and the press attention that the "crashed disk" story initially created.

There are references online about LaPaz being involved in a meteorite fall and impact area in Russia that occurred Feb. 12 or 18, 1948, and that blew one crater in a group of them about 75 feet across, and from which meteorite fragments were recovered, including several had a blue hue or color, and others that had a "rainbow" or multi-colored effect, but the lack of fragments and the lack of an impact crater at the area where the bluish glassy area was found raises the possibility of some other kind of cause and effect than the early 1948 Russian meteorite impact area LaPaz investigated.

I would appreciate any info, links, or other documentation that anyone may know about regarding this "blue glassy" area, as relatively little seems to be known about it. It may a clue or key to things related to the actual Roswell incident of renown due to the parallel time and place.

Steve, I can't help much on the "bluish" issue with La Paz. Sometimes the fireballs were described by witnesses as bluish green.

I'll point out a very interesting sentence in the UP version of the RAAF press release that the service retained from DXR54 right through to their post-mortem article.

"Residents near the ranch on which the disk was found reported seeing a strange blue light several days ago about three o'clock in the morning". (DXR54)

Questions abound here. For one, the source of this sentence implies he knows "the ranch on which the disk was found", and therefore the name of the rancher. He implies, as well, that he has spoken to "residents near the ranch".

But the name of rancher and ranch were not immediately made available, and were reported on later (and both misspelled).

Thanks for that info Don--I hadn't heard that before-- and what exactly was DXR54?

Here's a speculation for consideration:

If the neon bright green fireballs, which seemed to be at least some highly unusual and/or rare phenomena, possibly natural, maybe some strange atmospheric plasma or other unknown, that might indicate a copper material or residue oxidizing to give off the green color, and if it wasn't specifically meteoric, and the desert and was a beige to yellowish color, perhaps that might have left (the combination of green/copper materials with yellowish or beige tinged sand as primary colors, and when mixed under impact or high heat and pressure, maybe left a bluish glassy impact area, which might also account for no crater or fragments.

Just speculation, but that's about the only thing I can guess might have accounted for the color and nature of the impact area. Perhaps comet fragments?

Steve, DXR54 is the earliest existing version of the RAAF press release. Frank Joyce, the UP "stringer" in Roswell, at KGFL, kept a collection of the original telexes.

I think there is no one but Joyce to source the blue light story to. In his obituary in the Albuquerque Journal, his son said his father had been the first reporter at the site. Joyce also claimed to have had phone conversations with Mac Brazel at the time.

The UP never deleted the blue light story from later wires. We can assume they stood behind the story, having possibly confirmed it with Joyce. Joyce might also have been the source for UP's never deleted reference to Col. Blanchard being the source of the press release and specifically the "flying disc" language.

Unlike George Walsh, Joyce, in his accounts, does not seem astonished at the contents of the press release when he got a copy from Haut. Instead, he questions Haut about the appropriateness of making the information public.

We don't know when Joyce might have got on the story or when he visited the site.We also don't know why Brazel would call him rather than anyone else. If Joyce had already been on the story, that might account for it. As it is, we really don't even know why Brazel would go to Wilcox.

Joyce may have 1947 evidence in support of his post-1978 statements, just as I think at least some of the witnesses to "intimidation" do.

Thanks for the info on DXR54--had no idea the earliest version of the Haut press release has such a designation. Also, interesting about the blue light observed near Roswell around the same time.

@cda

"Re LaPaz, the meteorite explosion in Russia that LaPaz talks about was near Vladivostok and was in February 1947 (not '48).

"The Feb 18, 1948 meteorite fall was of a huge, 2300 pound, rock which occurred in Norton County, Kansas."

Yes, you are correct. The eastern Siberian meteorite fall near Ussuri occurred on Feb 12, 1947. No, La Paz does not appear to have been directly involved and did not do a site investigation. He did write an article for Popular Astronomy on this incident, however.

See: http://tinyurl.com/26lkjzd

On page 91 of La Paz's article, there is an interesting reference, but probably irrelevant to what I was asking about, above, regarding the bluish glassy area discovered near Roswell that I'm most interested in--"He notes also that the convex surfaces of some of these Ussuri specimens show intensely blue and even rainbow-like colorations."

[ Sorry for dyslexically mixing up the dates, above. I'm visiting my sister for the Thanksgiving holidays, and was using an iMac instead of my usual Dell PC, and wasn't initially sure how to open multiple browser windows to check my references while also composing a comment here. Mea culpa! 8^} ]

As minerals mainly but of the only extraterrestrial fragments you can touch (meteorits ^^) collector time to time, I dunno if LaPaz investigated or not the russian meteorit (I doubt he did as american in Russia), but the russian one at this time is the well known russian meteorit called "Sikhote-Alin" by collectors. Fall: 12 Feb. 1947, as CDA recalled.

Steve, where are you quoting (if you mean that) "bluish glassy" from? I don't see that in the Zimmerman affidavit. Does it exist in Roswell witness statements? Or are you assuming "glassy" from the "lightning"?

There would be heat fused silica glass at the bottom of a nuke crater (and shocked quartz underneath that).

Conglomerates of shocked quartz (which can look definitely "rainbow" color) in strata indicate impact-- but "surface earth" sounds more like a sheet or 'topology'.

If La Paz was thinking "lightning" then he was thinking fulgurite, but I don't know if such forms could be described as "surface earth".

Steve: "The reason I ask is that LaPaz, being mostly involved in meteoric issues, might have been investigating what caused this uniquely unusual "bluish glassy" area as a potential consequence of a meteoric impact site, even though it seems no meteorite fragments were found at the location in question."

I don't know if he would associate "an area where the surface earth had been turned a light blue" as a potential meteor impact site unless it was known to occur at impact sites. Glassed silica in conglomerates would be expected, I think. But in 1947 he was thinking "meteor" -- or at least a natural object. He said that if the green fireballs continued in their frequency, he would have to conclude they were not natural.

They did continue, and he thought they had to have originated on earth. One idea he had was that they were ice projectiles launched from Soviet aircraft.

The surface earth around Roswell I assume was alkaline and highly mineralized, but I know nothing specific. The desert areas I hike have a lot of hematite running the gamut from pale bluish, dark purpleish ('caput mortuum'), rust red.

Setting aside "glassy", what reaction would turn the mineral composition of the surface earth a light blue?

Interestingly, when I was searching for the possible impact site of the October 12, 1947 Mexico event (that I have continually referenced) with Ryan Wood, it was noticed that very close to what could be the site there is a large blue area (Serpentine?), and also pictograms.

Never ever having walked the site, I cannot know if it is significant to the impact, connected to it, or not.

Part 1:Been away for the Thanksgiving holidays. I see that CDA is back to a typical inane debunking game that if it wasn’t written down, it never happened:

Look at Vandenberg's daily logs as given in THE ROSWELL REPORT issued by the USAF. These show that it was on July 7 that Vandenberg had to deal with a 'flying disc' report (intermittently from 1 pm), which turned out to be just a prank, from Houston, Texas. Described as a "cock and bull story".

First of all, years ago I covered Vandenberg’s daily logs and their possible relationship to Roswell in great detail over on my website:

www.roswellproof.com/vandenberg.html

CDA, as usual, is spinning the story and ducking key points, just like the Air Force counterintelligence people did in their Roswell report. Vandenberg didn’t HAVE to deal with the Houston hoax disc story. He could easily have let some underling deal with it far down the food chain, such as a PIO, which is what normally would have been done. This was nothing but a newspaper rumor that a disc had been recovered that was military in origin. And it wasn’t much different than other hoax disc stories that Vandenberg never got involved with.

But Vandenberg chose to deal with it, because for some reason he urgently wanted the rumor tracked down and the story killed ASAP. Why was he so concerned?

Immediately afterward, Vandenberg’s log and calendar also shows he canceled a prearranged dental appointment, left the Pentagon, and went to the airport to meet AAF Secretary Stewart Symington. Why was Vandenberg acting as Symington’s chauffeur? Couldn’t Vandenberg have sent an aide to pick up Symington, or couldn’t Symington take a cab?

This is very strange behavior and suggests to me that something of great urgency had come up that only Vandenberg could deal with IN PERSON with Symington and it needed to be dealt with ASAP, thus Vandenberg PERSONALLY meeting Symington at the airport and driving him back to the Pentagon.

What was the matter of great urgency? This is about the time that Roswell PIO Walter Haut indicated that he learned of a second crash site with a craft and bodies that had been found by civilians. My speculation is that Vandenberg had just learned of this, hence his concern about the “cock and bull” Houston crashed disc story and also the urgency of seeing Symington ASAP.

While Vandenberg was off at the airport, over at the White House Admiral W.H.P. Blandy, the “atomic admiral” who was in charge of the Bikini atomic testing the previous year, was talking to Truman about an unspecified something, the first such meeting of Blandy with Truman since the previous September. The next day, however, Blandy was being widely quoted expressing skepticism about the flying saucers.

It is also interesting that about the same time that Vandenberg got back to the Pentagon with Symington, N.M. Senator Carl Hatch suddenly requested a personal meeting with Truman, which he was given on July 9. White House logs similarly fail to note what the subject matter was about. This is yet another Roswell “coincidence.” Had Hatch also just learned of what was happening in Roswell and wanted to discuss it personally with Truman?

As for July 8, the day everybody & everything supposedly went mad at the Pentagon and elsewhere, there is absolutely NOTHING about the 'discs' in Vandenberg's logs.

Now we come to the deliberately misleading spin, also used by the AF propagandists in their Roswell report. Absolutely nothing is explicitly mentioned about Roswell in Vandenberg’s log, therefore nothing happened. What brilliant illogic and how historically inaccurate.

Part 2:Historically inaccurate because the newspapers made it quite clear that Vandenberg WAS involved and the Pentagon was indeed flooded with phone calls following the Roswell press release, yet his log has not a peep about any of this. Why not? Roswell wasn’t some newspaper rumor about having a disc but an official acknowledgement of having one put out in a press release from one of the AAF’s most important bases. Further it was all over the radio and front page/headline news all over the country, quite unlike Houston the day before, that few newspapers covered.

The newspapers reported that Vandenberg stepped into the AAF’s Pentagon press room and personally took charge of the investigation. From there, they fired off phone calls to Roswell and Fort Worth to supposedly find out what happened. Vandenberg’s log does indicate he left his office for an hour, supposedly to see Symington (whose office was next door), but the time corresponds to when the newspapers report he actually dropped into the press room to deal with the Roswell press ruckus.

So Vandenberg’s daily log goes into great and gory detail about Vandenberg dealing with a dumb hoax disc story, but says not one word about Vandenberg dealing with Roswell, which the newspapers make very clear happened. As is all things Roswell, this strikes me again as very deliberate official amnesia (lack no record of an investigation afterward into the supposed big screw-up at Roswell). Leave no paper trail that may later come back to haunt you.

But I suppose since Vandenberg’s log doesn’t mention any of this happening, the newspapers must have made it all up and it never happened, right CDA? And since his log also says nothing about the Pentagon being in an uproar, the newspapers must have made that up as well. Nobody would have bothered to call the Pentagon to follow up on the Roswell press release, because the daily log doesn’t mention it and CDA says it never happened. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence in DebunkerLand.-----Another amazing Roswell “coincidence” is what happened the morning of July 8 before the Roswell press release. Vandenberg’s calendar and daily log indicates that he canceled a previously scheduled meeting and replaced it with a suddenly called and lengthy meeting of the military’s Joint Research and Development Board, headed by no less than Dr. Vannevar Bush. Is this the same Vannevar Bush that Wilbert Smith’s papers and various Canadian documents from 1950-51 PROVE was heading a supersecret saucer research program out of the same Research and Development Board? Indeed it is. Shades of an MJ-12-type saucer control group.

Yet another “coincidence”, this meeting coincided exactly in time with the staff morning meeting in Roswell, where Haut says the two crash sites were discussed, Gen. Ramey was there, and indicated that the whole thing was going to be covered up. Haut added he had the feeling that Ramey was taking his cues from the Pentagon, which would hardly be surprising for a mere brigadier general obediently following the chain of command.

And while we’re on the subject of coincidences, on July 8 the Pentagon also put out an explicit denial that the flying saucers were “space ships” (as reported by UP). And Gen. Ramey, before putting the official endorsement of a weather balloon/radar target for the Roswell flying disc, was also saying that it was too flimsy to have carried a crew, just in case, I suppose, anybody brought up the possibility of bodies associated with the wreckage. All “coincidence” of course.

Maybe, maybe not. On the morning of July 9, Vandenberg and Symington met with Lt. Gen. James "Jimmy" Doolittle and Gen. Lauris Norstad in another lengthy meeting. In all these meetings, Vandenberg's diary lists no subject matter and details nothing, so anything could have been discussed. Immediately afterward, they all went to an hour-and-a-half meeting with Army Chief of Staff Eisenhower and the rest of the Joint Chiefs, again no subject matter listed in Vandenberg’s log. But of course, none of this could possibly have anything to do with Roswell, because, well because CDA says so.

Doolittle already had a known UFO background. He investigated the Scandanavian “ghosts rockets” the previous summer on behalf on Vandenberg, who was then head of the Central Intelligence Group. We don’t know what he reported back, but the ghost rockets were definitely considered to be real missiles of some type. E.g., Gen. David Sarnoff, who also investigated and was close personal friends with Eisenhower, was quoted by the NY Times saying they were real missiles.

(Swedish intelligence would later tell USAF Europe intelligence that their analysts thought them extraterrestrial in origin. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_rockets)

(Doolittle is also rumored to have investigated the “Foo Fighters” during the war and also concluded them to be extraterrestrial, according to an aide, but this is undocumented.)

Norstad was AAF Director of Plans and Operations. When later CIRVIS regulations were put out for the reporting of all unidentified and suspicious aircraft, and thus of national security interest, it was the Director of Plans and Operations who was in charge of monitoring the CIRVIS UFO reports.

So I guess it was just another “coincidence” that all of them were meeting together the day after Roswell.

White House phone logs have Vandenberg speaking on the phone to Truman during this meeting, ostensibly about the meeting the next day to sign the official Air Force Day proclamation, also reported in the newspapers. But we can take it from CDA just how unreliable the newspapers are, such as reporting Vandenberg’s alleged involvement with Roswell, when his daily log says nothing.

As to more “coincidences”, on July 10, General Leslie Groves of the Manhattan Project and General Robert Montague flew out from NEW MEXICO to meet with Vandenberg and Curtis LeMay, who had also been advising Vandenberg on July 7 about the flying discs, and also briefed him before the suddenly called JRDB meeting the morning of July 8 at the same time as the staff meeting in Roswell. All of this is in Vandenberg’s log. As usual, only the details of exactly what was discussed are missing.

Montague, as many of you know, was one of the alleged MJ-12 members, and we know historically he was commander of the Army Guided Missile School at Fort Bliss, El Paso, and the following week it was announced that he was the new commander of Sandia Base near Albuquerque, where A-bombs were assembled and flown out..

To add to the list of coincidences, Roswell alien body eyewitness and photographer Frederick Benthal, clear back around 1990, said he was flown out to Roswell (probably on the afternoon/evening of July 7), and on the way was briefed that he might run into LeMay out there.

In 2007, Gen. Lawrence Craigie’s personal pilot, Ben Games, reported LeMay ordered Craigie out to Roswell from Wright Field. After a few hours there, Games flew him back to Washington, for what Games thought was a personal meeting with Truman. But Craigie was also Chief of the Research and Engineering Division at HQ AAF, and thus sat on Vannevar Bush’s JRDB, which met the morning of July 8, etc., etc.

All these amazing coincidences, but of course nothing was happening, because Roswell was a “nonevent” and was never explicitly mentioned in Vandenberg’s log..

With his job being handled back in Washington by the Vice Chief, namely Vandenberg. That’s why you have second-in-commands, to handle your job when you can’t be there to handle it directly yourself.

There may be more to Spaatz’s "fishing trip" than meets the eye. Spaatz wasn’t just fishing. As James Carrion would find out reviewing newspaper stories, it was also a working trip. He was giving 4th of July speeches and touring Boeing factories in Seattle and an AAF airfield in Tacoma on July 7. There was also nothing to stop him from gathering more information about all the flying disc sightings while he was there, the Pacific Northwest being one of the hot beds of sightings, starting with Kenneth Arnold’s near Seattle/Tacoma.

Vandenberg, after all, on July 5 in Dallas had indicated the Pentagon had received “thousands” of inquiries and had been investigating the flying discs since July 2. Why wouldn’t Spaatz be part of such an investigation as he toured the area? And why couldn't he stay in touch with Washington even if supposedly off fishing? We had advanced slightly beyond Pony Express days.

Carrion’s research also has Spaatz writing a letter on July 7 to--guess who?--Dr. Vannevar Bush (!), as referenced in a response from Bush’s secretary July 17 (subject matter again apparently unknown). And, of course, Bush and his JRDB were meeting the following morning with Vandenberg and LeMay, and for all we know, Craigie, who LeMay may have ordered out to Roswell in his stead, according to Craigie’s pilot, etc., etc. Spaatz’s letter to Bush is just another “coincidence” in a very long chain of Roswell "coincidences".

On July 9 or July 10, newspapers have Spaatz flying down to either Brooks Field or Randolph Field in San Antonio (after first flying to Hamilton Field, CA, which has a direct connection to the investigation of Kenneth Arnold’s sighting), supposedly on yet another fishing trip, before returning to Washington.

What I find interesting here is Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, is only a few miles away from either field and was the new home of the Army’s Institute of Surgical Research, specializing in trauma, that had been moved there the previous year from New York. Add to this the testimony of various B-29 crew members of the strange flight from Roswell to Fort Worth on July 9 carrying a large crate under armed guard, and met at Fort Worth by high brass and an undertaker. (The crew was told it was Ramey’s furniture.)

So my speculation is a mangled body or two could have been further transported to the trauma research unit in San Antonio for examination. Spaatz could fly in to have a look, and then could go off sailfish fishing in the Gulf as if nothing has happened. "Going fishing" would still be a nice cover story in case anybody tried to trace his activities.

Another “coincidence” was Ramey also being nearby doing an inspection of an old AAF airfield at Harlington, TX, in preparation for Air Force day August 1, then he also “went fishing” in the Gulf, but could easily have also met up with Spaatz at Fort Sam to brief him and discuss plans. Of course, more speculation on my part.

Part 5 (end):But then there is that worrying gap (!) between 6.20pm on July 8 and 8.30AM on July 9 when nothing is logged. Obviously this is the period where all the hush-hush meetings and activity took place and which was expunged from the logs. The mind boggles at what went on during those 14 hours. Whose mind? Certainly not mine.

The mind truly boggles (!) at more of CDA’s foolishness. Nothing is logged at those hours because the log only covered Vandenberg’s office activities while at the Pentagon. Every day, the log would note when he left the office for the day, but did not follow him home and make additional log entries as to when he ate dinner, went to a movie, took a shower, went to sleep, ate breakfast, etc

But because the log didn’t mention his activities away from the office, CDA’s DebunkerLogic (or maybe his psychic powers) is able to deduce that nothing of significance happened at Roswell. Way to go, CDA!

I tried to post a Part 1 of 2 comment in reply to Don, but it didn't show up. When I pressed the publish button, a blogger page showed suddenly, saying the "URL is too large to handle," even though it was within the 4096 character limit.

I had also clicked the box some time ago in this thread for follow-up comments to be sent to my email inbox, but nothing showed there either.

I had tried to post a little after 11 pm PST, but even after refreshing the page, it still didn't show. Then, about 30 minutes later, the comment shows up in my inbox, but still doesn't show up on this thread, and now it's three hours later!

Long comments (within the 4096 character limit) normally should show up on the thread within a minute or less, and within the same timeframe in email inbox, but for some reason this did not occur.

I do not know why David Rudiak brings in Haut's 2nd affidavit to support his claims, unless to bolster the idea that something of great importance was going on at the Pentagon on July 7 & 8. Does anyone still take this affidavit seriously? It was written by Don Schmitt anyway, after interviewing Haut, wasn't it?

Then we have Admiral Blandy meeting Truman. So what?

Why would Blandy be privy to any Roswell secrets anyway? Nothing to do with the Navy, was it?

The military are having numerous meetings with government people all the time, every day. Look at the logs for May, June, July, August, and so on and you will find endless such meetings, some arranged at short notice. SO WHAT?What has all this got to do with Roswell? DR speculates it has or may have a lot to do with it. I speculate it has NOTHING to do with it.

I further say that if Vandenberg had really known of an ET crash in NM, almost the whole of his daily activities during the next few days would have been taken up with this, and everything else would have been shelved. And, yes it would all be in his daily logs, perhaps temporarily under a codeword.

Senator Carl Hatch? Again, no need for him to be involved, was there? After all, this 'crash' was the secret of the century, so we are told.

I fear DR is using the same method as Stan Friedman did in his defence of the MJ-12 'Special Meeting' as per the Cutler/Twining memo. Eisenhower's daily logs did not mention any such meeting, but STF still postulated that Ike could have fitted it in, but that it was deliberately omitted from the log.

The 'coincidences' DR gives are only coincidences because DR wishes them to be. An outsider would attach little significance to them. As I say, these meetings, some secret, some not, go on all the time, and are so numerous that such 'coincidences' are certain to occur.

I wonder if perhaps the newspapers had got things confused about Vandenberg, and were in fact talking about his activities on July 7 (over the flying disc hoax story). Certainly I find it VERY hard to believe that if Vandenberg was really concerned over Roswell and knew ETs were likely to be involved, there would be absolutely no mention of any of it in the notes for July 8 and 9, maybe under a codename.

But, as I said, perhaps all the secret meetings were held during that 14-hour period which is omitted from the logs and shrouded in mystery. Perhaps....

I look forward to the forthcoming 'Wikileaks' about Roswell that Kevin, David Rudiak, Stan Friedman and many others are hoping to uncover. Some hope!

"Is this the same Vannevar Bush that Wilbert Smith’s papers and various Canadian documents from 1950-51 PROVE was heading a supersecret saucer research program out of the same Research and Development Board".

Wilbert Smith was, among other things, a Canadian contactee who talked to space beings by telepathy, but never mind, he used to put "Top Secret", without authority, on his research papers and mentioned Vannevar Bush because he heard Bush's name from an intermediary. He also constructed a model saucer, powered (so he told Keyhoe) by electromagnetic means. But it was all top secret, of course.

(Smith's infamous memo formed the beginning of the MJ-12 forgery, although Stan Friedman will never concede this fact)

Where are the other, non-Smith, Canadian documents proving Bush ever did any "supersecret saucer research"? Did Bush help construct Smith's secret model saucer, for example? Did he ever see it? I doubt it.

CDA said: "LaPaz worked in exactly the opposite sense, i.e. he calculated, using eye-witness sighting reports, where a meteorite probably landed, and then searched for it. Rickett has him doing all this in REVERSE!"

Exactly right. Professional meteoriticists may routinely work the problem in either or both directions, as the case may require. It rarely if ever happens that a natural bolide is observed or recorded continuously from the time it becomes incandescent until the time it (or its fragments) comes to rest on the ground. As a consequence, meteoriticists who engage in field work, such as La Paz did, are forced to divide their time between studying trajectories in the atmosphere (“falls”) and evidence found on the ground of objects which may have traversed through the atmosphere (“finds”).

When a meteoriticist encounters a “find”, the job is to try to infer the history of how the evidence came to be there. If all you have is literally the map coordinates with no other supporting information, then it’s true you can’t say much about the specific path the “find” took to get there. However there can often be additional data in the “find’s” signature that contains information about the velocity vector during the time it was still a “fall”. In cases where a meteoroid breaks up in flight or contacts the ground at a grazing angle the impact scars or the pattern of craters may be elongated or elliptical (a “strewn field”). This definitely indicates the direction the meteorite was traveling. Last year, I attended a conference on asteroid defense in which a researcher from Los Alamos was able to determine the flight direction and altitude of the 1908 Tunguska bolide by computing the pressure patterns that would have been produced by its motion and explosion and matching those to the pattern of downed trees. Of course, the tree fall patterns at Tunguska were not known until many years after the actual explosion itself and the computation wasn’t done until about a century later.

In cases where a bolide impacts the Earth at greater than terminal velocity, a crater or scar will probably be created. This is caused by converting kinetic energy of motion into the work required for excavation of soil. Meteoriticists were among the first to work out approximate mathematical models between the energy and momentum thus transferred and the size, direction, and shape of the crater. Obtaining an estimate of the total amount of excavated material and its pattern would allow a meteoriticist to estimate the speed of the bolide at point of impact and perhaps its impact angle. Like the Tunguska explosion case, determination of these parameters would be possible long after the impact event, as long as the physical evidence was substantially undisturbed.

Purportedly, there was a long scar or furrow of displaced soil at the Roswell “crash site”. If so, it would have made perfect sense to bring along a professional meteoriticist such as Dr. La Paz to try to model where the impactor came from and where it might have gone to. Such a furrow would contain information about both the magnitude and direction of the impactor’s velocity. This would logically lead to the idea of searching up range and down range for additional impact sites or debris including, purportedly, the blue glassy patch.

Speaking of the blue glassy patch, what could cause such a phenomenon?

To someone on the inside of the US nuclear weapons program in 1947, I think the similarity of the blue glass to Trinitite (found at the site of the first fission bomb test) would have been obvious and extraordinarily interesting. Desert soil naturally contains all the elements necessary to create glasses, including silicon, oxygen, and alkali metals. When the soil is melted and cooled to form a glass, the chemical composition of the glass is identical to the parent material from which it forms. The relative abundance or absence of trace elements determines the color of the glass—hence, the variability of color from location to location. Most importantly, the formation of Trinitite and similar glasses requires the presence of a highly uncommon energy deposition mechanism. Without getting into too much physics, the elements that form glass are extremely poor heat conductors; that’s why it’s impossible to make glass by simply turning a conductive or convective heat source (like an acetylene torch) onto the desert sand. To make Trinitite or similar glasses, it is necessary to deposit sufficient energy to melt the elements almost instantaneously, via penetrating radiation. At the time, the only known source of penetrating radiation capable of doing that was an atomic bomb. Since an atomic bomb was obviously not detonated at the glassy blue site, the implication was that some unknown technology capable of producing the same power densities at a localized scale was flying around in the New Mexico skies. A nuclear weapons physicist from Los Alamos would have understood the significance of this at the time, but I think it unlikely that La Paz would have. So, I wouldn’t expect evidence of a continuing investigation of this topic to show up in La Paz’ records

I wonder if perhaps the newspapers had got things confused about Vandenberg, and were in fact talking about his activities on July 7 (over the flying disc hoax story). Certainly I find it VERY hard to believe that if Vandenberg was really concerned over Roswell\

There you have CDA in a nutshell. Vandenberg's involvement with Roswell (as reported by major newspapers at the time like the NY Times, Washington Post, SF Examiner, AP, etc.) never happened (yes, NEVER HAPPENED!) simply because CDA personally can't believe "Vandenberg was really concerned over Roswell."

Yep, let's just let CDA rewrite history according to his personal system of beliefs and ignore literally everything that may contradict it.

absolutely no mention of any of it in the notes for July 8 and 9

Which, as I pointed out, is extremely curious, considering the newspapers said he WAS involved, reacting directly to the press furor generated by an OFFICIAL press release from his atomic bomber base that they had an actual flying disc in their possession.

Even more curious since Vandenberg's log does go into considerable detail the previous day about a mere press rumor of a recovered disc in Houston supposedly bearing the name of a local commander. Vandenberg acted aggressively here, wanting the rumor tracked down and the story killed.

Very few newspapers even mentioned the Houston story, and Vandenberg being involved was never publicly mentioned.

But, as I said, perhaps all the secret meetings were held during that 14-hour period which is omitted from the logs and shrouded in mystery.

CDA reduced to total babbling idiocy here, because, as I pointed out when CDA previously made this "observation", Vandenberg's log ONLY covered his activities at his Pentagon office, not when the man went elsewhere and was off-the-clock, like home to go to sleep.

Vandenberg's log on all other work days has his secretary dutifully recording when he arrived at the office in the morning from home and checked out in the evening and left the Pentagon to go home. Why CDA considers the night-time blank in the log a "mystery" is beyond me.

Let's look at the newspapers DR quotes to see what was actually reported about Gen Vandenberg.

Washington Post (July 9), John G.Norris:

"But under the direction of Lt Gen Hoyt Vandenberg, acting AAF chief, who dropped into the Washington AAF public information headquarters in the midst of the excitement, they burned up the wires to Texas and New Mexico".

[CDA note: where are all these wires now? Were any retained or were they just 'junk' wires of no significance?]..........

NY Times (July 9), Murray Schumach:

"In Washington Lt Gen Hoyt Vandenberg, deputy chief of the AAF, hurried to his headquarters press section. Atomic experts in the capital were certain that whatever had been found was not of their doing, but no one seemed to know just how to dispose of the object"............

SF Examiner (July 9), Dick Pearce:

Lt Gen Hoyt Vandenberg, deputy chief of the AAF, hurried to the AAF press section in Washington and personally took charge as newspapers and wire services clamored for details"..........

We are not told what time of day it was in Washington when Vandenberg 'hurried to the press section', but may assume it was very soon after Haut's release went out. Probably after 2pm EDT, but beyond that we cannot say.

The above reports are all very similar and do not indicate that Vandenberg did anything beyond handling the publicity and the press enquiries for a short time. But as there is nothing about it in his daily log, everything else is speculation. Perhaps in this case the press did overdo things a bit.

Oh, and regarding the 14-hour 'blank period' in the log, DR obviously cannot tell when I am writing tongue-in-cheek. But then maybe I can't tell when he is, either.

For his benefit, I can inform him that yes, I did know the office logs cease when the working day ends. I hope this is now clear to him.

Part 1cda wrote:We are not told what time of day it was in Washington when Vandenberg 'hurried to the press section', but may assume it was very soon after Haut's release went out. Probably after 2pm EDT, but beyond that we cannot say.

Actually we can say fairly accurately, starting first with the documented fact that AP first put out the base press release on the newswire at around 2:30 MST Roswell time, or 4:30 EST Washington time (not 2:00 pm EDT) .

Various newspapers like the SF Examiner, NY Times, and the Chicago Tribune then indicated Gen. Ramey was contacted by phone within an hour of the press release and had begun to change the story, or by 5:30 EST

Now add Vandenberg's log indicating he left his office at 5:14 EST and didn't return for an hour. The log says he went to Sec. Symington's about Truman's Air Board, but only minutes before, Vandenberg was again indicated as going to Symington's office about the Air Board, and back 6 minutes later to again leave to see Symington about the Board.

But instead, he must have gone to the AAF press room for an hour to deal with Roswell, as the newspapers reported. This is the only time in Vandenberg's log schedule when he could have done this, and it overlaps with when the newspapers indicated he would have done it.

The above reports are all very similar

Also known as "corroboration" that the story was true and not made up by one news source. E.g., major dailies like the NY Times and Washington Post had permanent Pentagon correspondents, probably right there in the press room when Vandenberg was said to drop in and take charge.

...and do not indicate that Vandenberg did anything beyond handling the publicity and the press enquiries for a short time.

Yes, but also make it quite clear that Vandenberg WAS involved, despite your initial denials to the contrary (same gambit used by USAF debunkers in their 1994 Roswell report—if it wasn’t written down in his log, it never happened).

But as there is nothing about it in his daily log, everything else is speculation.

Yes, that's why when dealing with highly secret matters, not writing things down is considered good security practice, so that there is no paper trail. E.g., Gen. Robert Landry, a Truman military advisor starting 1948, said, when interviewed by the Truman Library, that Truman asked him to provide quarterly UFO briefings from central intelligence, all to be done ORALLY, unless absolutely necessary that the briefing be written down. Truman was very security conscious. We currently know of no written UFO briefings that Truman received from Landry and the CIA, maybe still classified, or maybe never written down period.

I consider it significant that Vandenberg DIDN'T tell his Secretary what he was REALLY up to during that one hour gap when it instead indicates that he was at Symington's office, not even an innocuous comment like, "Gen. Van (the secretary liked to call him "Gen. Van" for short) had to forego his meeting with Symington to handle some silly press story about Roswell having a flying disc."

"General Van" seemed to be having an awful lot of meetings with AAF Secretary Symington in those critical days (all without details in his log), in which any number of topics other than Truman's Air Board could have been discussed, unbeknownst to the secretary recording his log. About all the secretary knew and wrote in the log is what "General Van" told him/her.

Part 2:Thus we have the curiosity the previous day of Gen. Van greatly detailing his highly unusual personal handling of the Houston hoax disc story, but not a single word about Roswell, not even to mention personally handling the press ruckus surrounding it.

We also have the curiosity of Gen. Van then dropping his dental appointment after the Houston matter to personally rush out to the airport and bring Symington back to the Pentagon, like somebody else couldn't have handled this. What the heck was going on that Vandenberg had to do all this instead of letting the usual inferiors handle the trivia?

Perhaps in this case the press did overdo things a bit.

So after finally acknowledging that the press did indeed implicate Vandenberg in Roswell, after CDA first tried to make the case that Vandenberg wasn't interested (because CDA said so) and the lack of commentary about Roswell in the log, we get more vintage CDA doubletalk about "perhaps the press did overdo things a bit."

Exactly what did they "overdo"? They reported that Vandenberg dropped into the press room to take personal charge of the Roswell investigation and directed calls to Roswell and Fort Worth.

CDA tried to deny any of this ever happened, or if it did happen, came up with the preposterous theory that it had to do with the hoax Houston case the day before. Places like "Roswell" and "Fort Worth" must have been confused with "Houston". Maybe the reporters were all Brits like CDA and couldn’t tell one American city from another.

Or maybe CDA believes the press was as stupid as Roswell base officers, who similarly couldn't tell a balloon and balsa wood kite from a Kenneth Arnold supersonic flying saucer.

Oh, and regarding the 14-hour 'blank period' in the log, DR obviously cannot tell when I am writing tongue-in-cheek. But then maybe I can't tell when he is, either.

For his benefit, I can inform him that yes, I did know the office logs cease when the working day ends. I hope this is now clear to him.

Yes, I was confused, because CDA’s other supposedly "nonsarcastic" remarks (like Houston getting confused with Roswell) were as inane as his "mystery" log night blankness. Maybe CDA should include a sarcasm icon so that we can tell the difference, with another icon for his dead serious inane personal opinions presented as fact. Or maybe CDA himself can't tell the difference. Or maybe everything he writes is nothing but a big joke to get a rise out of people, also known as trolling.

There's something very weird going on here with blogger/blogspot comment functions: I tried to post a Part 1 of 2 comment in reply to Don, but it didn't show up. When I pressed the publish button, a blogger page showed suddenly, saying the "URL is too large to handle," even though it was within the 4096 character limit.

<...>Long comments (within the 4096 character limit) normally should show up on the thread within a minute or less, and within the same timeframe in email inbox, but for some reason this did not occur.

<...>

Anyone else experiencing this?

I have for the past two or three months. Damn annoying, sometimes leading me to multiple post the same thing because it doesn't seem to have been posted the first, or second, or third try, then have go back and delete the copies. Happened to me again today. Apologies everybody, particularly Kevin.

Normally I use Firefox, but tried to post instead with IE, getting a different error message that IE couldn't find the webpage. Also the post doesn't show up on the comments page under IE. But when I then switch to Firefox, the post is there.

"A rise out of people"? Which people? The only person getting this rise is DR.

I treat his ideas about what might have been, what could have been, and what possibly was or wasn't, as just idle and pointless speculation.

He knows there is absolutely NO documentation to back up anything he says or hopes about Roswell and Vandenberg, Symington, Blandy and others that day or days. He also knows (or certainly ought to by now) that nothing will ever turn up to verify his hopes and thoughts. So it will remain permanently in the world of fantasy.

The truth is that the US top brass had far more important things on their minds than the Roswell flying disc that summer, as did the leading politicians.

And finally, yes I can tell one US town and city from another. And I am not, in this case, writing tongue in cheek.

I think we have strayed a lot from the original title of this post. Perhaps it is time to call a halt.

Has the USAF ever acknowledged there was a RAAF flying disc press release? The 1994 Report does not.

"Concerning the initial announcement, ”RAAF Captures Flying Disc,” researchfailed to locate any documented evidence as to why that statement was made."

(This is a misquotation of the Roswell Daily Record (RDR) headline (it had "saucer", not "disc")

The reason the statement was made is because the RAAF issued a press release it had a flying disc in its possession. The documentary evidence is the AP wire story, which names its sources (George Walsh, KSWS and "Lieut. Warren Haught", RAAF), and which published the text of the RAAFpr. Both Haut and Walsh were alive in 1994. They were available for the USAF to interview.

There are two Roswell incidents, 1) the press release, and 2) its content, the flying disc.

The USAF is very comfortable with discussing 2 as are skeptics and advocates. But to me, it is misdirection, stage magic (See? There's nothing up my sleeve...watch carefully). That's why so much time and energy has been taken up the past 15 years discussing Mogul. You cannot get from a crashed Mogul to the RAAF pr. No way. Folks, Mogul is bullshit. Ok?

You, David, gimme a new idea for my students: to take logs concerning Generals, Presidents... Aka official diaries, from dunno who, etc.

And to rewrite History cause YOU WANT TO BELIEVE on something, or to conform such diaries with... your believings.

(Here, drunked ETs, having crashed a craft after a so long travel in space and time, in N.M., with balsa sticks, tin foils, candy tapes, scotch, neoprene, testimoned...

But not in fact.

Thank you David! Your lines are perfect examples for future generations of what "hypothesis confirmation bias" is, for ethnologists or others in Human Sciences, who will studied (or studying) the Roswell UFO modern myth.

One more time, as CDA pointed, your lack of HARD evidences conduces you to speculate. Only. That's ufology and a rule1 in the Roswell myth.

Well, I respect you (I understand how "to believe" in this myth is sincere, despite your several type I errors).

Part 1:Gilles, as usual lamely arguing that Roswell proponents are basing conclusions only on “wanting to believe” (he along with other debunkers being innocent of such mortal sins), writes:

And to rewrite History cause YOU WANT TO BELIEVE on something, or to conform such diaries with... your believings.

No, I have not “rewritten history”; everything I have written is historical fact. These are oddities and “coincidences” in such things as Vandenberg’s diary and newspaper stories that might be explained as responses by Vandenberg and others to what was taking place in Roswell.

Speculation as to significance, yes, but it is dishonest to label it "rewriting history". It is also arrogant and presumptuous, since it implies that you know what the "true" history is.

Again, a summary of some of the historical oddities:

*Why was Vandenberg personally handling a response to a not-much-reported hoax crashed disc story in Houston on July 7, going into great detail in his log, but not mentioning anything about Roswell on July 8, even though this generated a flood of inquiries to the Pentagon and was caused by an official announcement from Roswell base that they had an actual flying disc?

*Why didn’t Vandenberg’s log mention him personally handling the public relations crisis generated by the Roswell press release by going to the AAF press room? This was widely reported in the newspapers, but not a word in his log. (If you want to talk about “rewriting history”, you should be chastising CDA and the AF debunkers from 1994 who instead tried to argue that Vandenberg was not involved in any way because nothing was written down in his log, despite newspaper stories clearly to the contrary.)

*Why did Vandenberg, after handling Houston, suddenly drop his dental appointment on July 7, and instead personally go to the airport to pick up AAF Secretary Symington and bring him back to the Pentagon? Sounds like something very urgent had come up that demanded immediate consultation with Symington. This strikes me as a logical conclusion given what happened, not “wild speculation”. Is it just another coincidence that this also corresponds in time to when Haut said he learned of the second crash site with the craft and bodies near Roswell? Is it another coincidence that N.M. Senator Carl Hatch requested a private meeting with Truman at the same time? (Granted July 9) This is another FACT, documented in the Truman calendar and phone logs. What isn’t documented is why Hatch requested the meeting and what they discussed, just like we can’t know for sure exactly why Vandenberg dropped everything to pick up Symington at the airport.

*Why did Vandenberg suddenly cancel a prescheduled meeting the morning of July 8 and replace it with another meeting of the Joint Research and Development Board headed by Vannevar Bush, the same people implicated in Canadian documents 3 years later as operating a super-secret group looking into the “modus operandi” of the saucers. (Wilbert Smith documents) Is it also a “coincidence” that AAF chief Gen. Spaatz, supposedly fishing in Oregon, wrote a letter to Bush the previous day? Is it just another “coincidence” that the Roswell base staff meeting coincided exactly in time with the sudden JRDB meeting with Vandenberg?

*Is it yet another coincidence that the one known outcome of the JRDB meeting was to start a search for a suitable launch site for putting missiles into orbit (a previously unknown fact told to me by Bob Koford in private email). Could this be a policy response to the saucers and Roswell, i.e., a need to get into space as a step in countering a possible threat?

*Why did the AAF press office put out a release around the time or soon after the JRDB meeting explicitly denying that the saucers were “space ships”? (UP story) (Soon followed by the Roswell base press release, the weather balloon debunking, and Vandenberg getting involved in the Pentagon press room, but not writing anything down about it.)

Part 2:*Is it another coincidence that Vandenberg met the following morning with Symington and Generals Norstad and Doolittle, when Doolittle is known for a fact to have investigated another UFO phenomenon, the European ghost rockets of 1946, and reported back to Vandenberg when he was head of Central Intelligence, or that Norstad would have been the Pentagon person to have receive CIRVIS UFO reports?

*Is it another coincidence that this meeting was immediately followed by a meeting with Eisenhower and the rest of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, again without listing any subject matter?

*Is it yet another coincidence that two New Mexico generals, Groves of the Manhattan Project and Special Weapons Project, and Montague, head of the guided missile program at Fort Bliss, flew out and met with Vandenberg on July 10?

*Is it a coincidence that Gen. Twining of the Air Materiel Command, Wright Field, was in New Mexico July 7-July 11? What did Twining mean when he wrote the Boeing Aircraft president the following week, apologizing for canceling a previous scheduled tour of Boeing plants because of something sudden and unexpected that had come up?

There are more “coincidental” items like this. To say that I am doing nothing by “rewriting history” is intellectually dishonest. All of these statements about what happened are totally factual, documented history.

What can be disputed is the interpretation of their significance or their relationship to Roswell. Is it a matter of “connecting dots” where they shouldn’t be connected, or noticing an awful lot of coincidences that could very well be connected given something of great importance happening in New Mexico?

(Here, drunked ETs, having crashed a craft after a so long travel in space and time, in N.M., with balsa sticks, tin foils, candy tapes, scotch, neoprene, testimoned.

Lacking anything else, Gilles falls back on his usual lame debunker ridicule and hack arguments about balsa wood, tin foil, Scotch tape, and other totally ordinary and familiar materials being all that was found. What Gilles can’t explain, without drugs or magical thinking (or idiotic, speculative, overwrought psychosocial theories), is how multiple, well-trained, intelligent officers at Roswell base could be totally flummoxed by any of this, so much so that they confused such flimsy, ordinary materials as coming from a Kenneth Arnold reported supersonic flying saucer and put out a press release that they had one.

Thank you David! Your lines are perfect examples for future generations of what "hypothesis confirmation bias" is, for ethnologists or others in Human Sciences, who will studied (or studying) the Roswell UFO modern myth.

Thank you Gilles! You lines are perfect examples for future generations of your own “hypothesis confirmation basis.” Like all debunkers, you arrogantly seem to think you are immune to such human frailties. No doubt future ethnologists and others in Human Sciences will want to study this fanatical psychological denial malady when they study the Roswell Mogul Modern Myth (MMM).

Part 3:One more time, as CDA pointed, your lack of HARD evidences conduces you to speculate. Only. That's ufology and a rule1 in the Roswell myth.

One more time, Gilles, as I have pointed out, your lack of HARD evidence conduces you to speculate about nonexistent Mogul balloons. I have repeatedly asked you and CDA for the “HARD evidence” proving that a Mogul Flight #4 even existed, much less crashed at the Foster ranch and was recovered. Can you point to a single Mogul document saying as much, instead of a single sentence saying that some unspecified flight was “canceled” because of clouds, coupled with a blank in the numbered launch sequence, just like for the similarly blank, canceled flights #2, #3, and #9, that also never went up?

No, I guess not, since there is no such documentation that a flight ever took place, despite the fact that Mogul is declassified and nothing about it should be hidden.

If you want to deal in true HARD evidence instead of speculative debunker myths, how about the real Flight #5 being the actual first Mogul New Mexico flight, as is actually written in Mogul documents and official Air Force and NASA flight histories? There is nary a word in any of these documents and flight histories about the debunker’s mythical Flight #4.

Maybe future ethnolgoists and others in Human Sciences will also want to study the “hypothesis confirmation bias” of the people who wrote these documents and refuse to acknowledge the reality of Mogul Flight #4, right Gilles? You have nothing but your own “will to believe” in the mythical Flight #4, yet you stubbornly cling to it as if it were irrefutable historical fact.

I have also repeatedly asked Gilles for the “HARD evidence” that Mack Brazel’s alleged “Mogul flower tape”, upon which Gilles bases his entire Mogul theory, is present in any of the Fort Worth photos. Come on Gilles, show us where it is. That should be easy “HARD evidence” for you to come up with since the negatives exist and you can easily obtain copies of the photos and analyze them in great detail, as others have done.

Gee, again sorry that nobody can find the mythical flower tape, including the Air Force Roswell debunkers and their mystery “national level organization” photoanalysis lab. And if anybody had a “hypothesis confirmation bias”, they did, yet even they admitted they couldn’t find anything like that.

So Gilles, if want to see someone who is really making up “myths”, “rewriting history” and guilty as sin of “hypothesis confirmation bias”, look in the mirror.

I mean that the diary's exercice you did should probably be done for other dates, in order to match the diaries with the Roswell myth. It prooves nothing, just speculation or a good scenario for S.F. moovies.

You well know that this period for Army is "crucial" cause the creation of USAF and the "Air Force Day" organization + the "common" things such proud men have to do each day. So, they are many meetings between "high heads" in that period and you use the diaries to speculate a link to Roswell event despite no one mention.

Same it is regarding classified documents of the 1947/1950 period (and after): Roswell is not mentionned, as the documents show the Army have no one crash exhibit. Same is concerning Ruppelt who was in W.F. before Sign and Grudge in "crash Intelligence" services. No mention of your Saucer too.

Here too, as usual and standard, Roswell mythmakers call the "no need to know": finaly the Roswell no mention and the $$ and manpowers ressources allocated to solve the saucer mystery after that pseudo crash become a sort of stratageme and are part of the cover-up. That's fully normal, and skeptics must not be surprised by the absence of evidence!

I'm affraid it have no one chance to succeed in a law court, dear ET advocat(s).

On the other hand, concerning law court, sceptics CAN present to defend their prosaic thesis (among others) testimonies and hard dataes.

And THIS despite the fact the burden of proof is not for the Scektics : ET proponents have the burden of proof, not "us". You inverse the burden of proof...

Brazel interview was forced for ET proponents, but post 1978 direct witnesses state about balsa sticks, laminated "tin-foils", neoprene, and the famous tape, etc. too? What a strange coincidence! They weren't forced to "replicate" Brazel description, they were too?

Concerning "hard proofs" for the law court, Victor T. Hoeflich is in july 1947 newspaper (Bergen -New Jersey- EveningRecord) and it is writted he was in charge of the construction of Radar Targets in New York (Brooklyn).

ML307 blue print mentions as detail in nota 22 and marge to reinforce ML307 with 3M tape. THE detail killing the saucer.

US patents proove Hoeflich was the director or the advisor of American Merri-Lei Corporation toys manufactory and the manufactory was in Brooklyn. I found publicities of 1947 period concerning American Merri Lei Corp, with the Brooklyn adress.

It exists many 3M candy tapes used by toys manufactory with symbols (Many historiographical publicities). So, it have full sens American Merri Lei Corporation used the tape at disposal to reinforce the radar-targets they were in charge.

It exists an historical drawing of cluster number 2 with ML307, NYU apparatus exported to N.M. in june 1947 for the first time.

May the 29th and June the 4th, clusters have flyed and were not recuperated, as stated with another historiographical document (Crary diairy).

The witnesses CANT have invented such a detail - the tape AND with Sticks - in their description, the DNA of NYU/Mogul stuff, project "flying" in time and space of the event. "QED".

"QED" because it is corroboted by both testimonies AND historiographical sources, something the level of evidence of the E.T. Roswell proponents cant present for 3 decades now.

Here, the chain of coincidences to obtain an extraterrestrial craft with such balloons + ML307 elements and DNA is passing the bounderies of my imagination and creativity.

As an aside, I seriously suggest a comparison of Roswell with the Washington radar/visual sightings of '52 may be useful. The ten days following July 19, 1952 were a 'hot' period for the USAF regarding UFOs. And the sightings, each of which went on for hours, had wide publicity.

Keyhoe said that the famous Washington press conference of July 29 was ordered by Gen. Twining. And Vandenberg was still Chief of Staff in July 52, so I wondered if an examination of the daily logs of either Twining or Vandenberg showed any unusual activity on their part during this period. Any hurried meetings with Truman, with VIPs or any cancelled appointments, or any mention of UFO-related activities? For example, was there any reference to the press conference itself?

If there was any mention in the logs, it would imply the USAF top brass were far more concerned about the 1952 events than the Roswell event of five years before.(Remember that Ramey was also present at the July 29 conference.)

It might be worthwhile (if anyone is motivated enough) to examine such logs, assuming they are stillextant. What about it, Kevin or DR?

Can you point to a single Mogul document saying as much, instead of a single sentence saying that some unspecified flight was “canceled” because of clouds, coupled with a blank in the numbered launch sequence, just like for the similarly blank, canceled flights #2, #3, and #9, that also never went up?

Pff, again this old argument of ET Roswell proponents...

When flights have no altitude dataes to be scientificaly exploited, they cant be "research" ones and then noone scientific report can be written, and then they cant be in the famous table which is concerning "research" flights ONLY. How many times I have "explained" that fact?

The flights jumped (in number) in the table are the "service" ones, aka flights for which the dataes cant be exploited by the team in the report they done for AMC. But they flew! They failled ONLY on that point: obtain all dataes in order to made a report. They are only sort of fail, but they flew!

Such flights (jumped numbers) have not been canceled, or they were not labeled by number...

IF you follow Crary diary, and if all tests cancelled have a number (your claim), the flight 5 (research) would be 7 or 8, or 10 or more.

Labelled FLIGHTS, by essence, have flew. But they failled, for the team, in the sens no scientific dataes can be exploited. Canceled flights have no numbers, because they never flew!

For example, concerning the flight of the 4 june (flight service number 4), taking into account it passed the 40 miles of the radar range, they were only theodolite dataes (horizontal) and not vertical dataes, at disposal.

Then, without such vertical dataes, the team cant write a scientific report, and the test is becomed "service" then, and is "jumped" in the famous table concerning "research" flights ONLY.

This flight is the reason why the scientists stopped the use of radar-targets to obtain vertical dataes, and used radio-sonde (not the minus one embarked in this 4 june flight) in order to collect vertical dataes...

In other word, the 4 june have launched the apparatus already inflated (you can deflate the balloons), with his expandable materials, including ML307 radar targets consolidated by Candy tape, made by Merri-Lei.

Gilles wrote:When flights have no altitude dataes to be scientificaly exploited, they cant be "research" ones and then noone scientific report can be written, and then they cant be in the famous table which is concerning "research" flights ONLY. How many times I have "explained" that fact?

There are so much garbage in Gilles’ latest posting, it is hard to know where to begin. It is also compounded by Gilles’ English being much worse than normal, making some of his statements almost incomprehensible.

Let us start with what a numbered, recorded Mogul flight was. These were attempted constant-altitude flights, testing various balloon materials/balloon configurations along with various constant altitude controls. To know if they worked properly they had to be tracked; multiple tracking systems were used. If these constant-altitude balloons went up at all, even if they failed, they were tracked and the data recorded as numbered flights. If they were “cancelled”, they did NOT go up, were not tracked, and not recorded as numbered flights in summaries, instead being nothing but a blank in the numbered sequence.

The flights jumped (in number) in the table are the "service" ones, aka flights for which the dataes cant be exploited by the team in the report they done for AMC. But they flew! They failled ONLY on that point: obtain all dataes in order to made a report. They are only sort of fail, but they flew!

Bunk piled on bunk. If they flew, they were tracked, and the flights were recorded, ALWAYS. But Gilles claims canceled Mogul flights all magically turned into Moore’s “service flights” that actually did fly but weren’t recorded (what Gilles confusingly refers to as “flights jumped in number”).

First of all, Moore’s “service flights” were very simplified balloon flights usually consisting of only a few balloons testing a specific piece of equipment. They were NEVER fully configured Mogul constant-altitude flights.

E.g., Crary’s second entry in his diary on June 4 (after the “cancelled” on account of clouds entry) of a balloon cluster carrying a sonobuoy listening device to test reception in the air and ground would likely have been an unnumbered service flight (half a dozen balloons would do the job). But this also means it would have lacked the usual true Mogul flight configuration of a large balloon/balloon train, constant-altitude control equipment, tracking devices such as radiosondes and radar targets, batteries, parachutes, etc. There was no need to track such a service flight since it was not a constant-altitude flight and was testing only sonobuoy reception. Nor would it be designed to stay up long or go very far, like a true constant-altitude flight. It would go straight up, the rubber balloons would burst at high altitude, and come straight down.

For a FACT, Flights #2 & #9, other missing numbered Mogul flights, NEVER FLEW, period. E.g., #9 was hastily assembled after #8 on July 3 due to a delayed V-2 flight. When the V-2 flight was later canceled, so was #9. According to Moore, when these flights were canceled, all the reusable equipment was stripped off, such as any altitude control equipment or tracking equipment like radiosondes or radar targets. Only the nonreusable neoprene rubber were cut loose. Flight #2 back in N.J. was scrubbed because of difficulties in launching. Neither of these somehow became service flights that went up.

Such flights (jumped numbers) have not been canceled, or they were not labeled by number... IF you follow Crary diary, and if all tests cancelled have a number (your claim), the flight 5 (research) would be 7 or 8, or 10 or more. Labelled FLIGHTS, by essence, have flew. But they failled, for the team, in the sens no scientific dataes can be exploited. Canceled flights have no numbers, because they never flew!

An example of the almost incomprehensible. Let’s leave it at planned but cancelled constant-altitude Mogul flights do indeed have no numbers because they NEVER FLEW.

Part 2:For example, concerning the flight of the 4 june (flight service number 4), taking into account it passed the 40 miles of the radar range, they were only theodolite dataes (horizontal) and not vertical dataes, at disposal.

More bunk. First, you certainly can derive altitude (“vertical dataes”) and other trajectory data from theodolite (tracking surveyor telescope) data if you had more than one such theodolite station, which Mogul had. It’s called mathematical triangulation using simple trigonometry. I’m surprised that Gilles, as an alleged mathematician, has never heard of it.

Then, without such vertical dataes, the team cant write a scientific report, and the test is becomed "service" then, and is "jumped" in the famous table concerning "research" flights ONLY.

These arguments by Gilles border on the totally irrational. Not only could they determine altitude beyond Moore’s fictionally precise 39.6 mile radar range, as they did on many flights using optical triangulation and radiosondes (ALWAYS used), even if the data set was incomplete or the altitude data ambiguous, they still ALWAYS recorded these constant-altitude flights in the flight summaries, the ones that actually went up, that is. Even partial tracking data is tracking data, and even failed constant-altitude flights were dutifully numbered and recorded.

In fact, most later flights would go well beyond tracking range, whether radar, radiosonde, or optical. These were not “jumped” (removed as numbered Mogul flights) nor did they magically transform into unnumbered “service flights”. They kept and logged the tracking data that they had up to when the balloons were lost. Why in the world would you throw this data out? It defeated the whole purpose of what they were doing.

So what we have here is highly convoluted, BS, magical-thinking “logic” by Gilles, who can’t face the fact that there never was a Mogul Flight #4, and has to invent this incredible scenario of real flights being removed from records because supposedly they lacked complete data. Total, absolute, unmitigated BUNK, contradicted by actual Mogul flight records.

This flight is the reason why the scientists stopped the use of radar-targets to obtain vertical dataes, and used radio-sonde (not the minus one embarked in this 4 june flight) in order to collect vertical dataes...

More confabulation by Gilles to preserve the idea of a nonexistent flight that had to have radar targets. ALL true Mogul flights (the constant-altitude flights) carried tracking radiosondes, right from the start (flight summaries). ALL were optically tracked through multiple theodolite stations (flight summaries), which again could determine trajectories through triangulation. Many were tracked by air by chase planes. There were multiple tracking systems in place so they could determine flight trajectories, including altitude data. They didn’t absolutely require radar tracking (which was rarely used), which would have been backed up anyway with other tracking even if it was used.

In other word, the 4 june have launched the apparatus already inflated (you can deflate the balloons), with his expandable materials, including ML307 radar targets consolidated by Candy tape, made by Merri-Lei.

All of this Gilles candy tape/Merri-Lei garbage is totally irrelevant to why there is no Flight #4 in Mogul records. The reason is it was “cancelled” by bad weather. It did not magically then turn into a service flight because it really did fly fully configured but they couldn’t get “vertical data” from theodolite or radar data and threw all the other data out and removed it from numbered Mogul flights. This is all pure fantasy on Gilles part.

The bottom line here is that I demanded Gilles produce some of his sacred “hard proof” that there ever was a Mogul Flight #4. His “hard proof” is instead the biggest pile of steaming, self-delusional, confabulated, illogical, irrational self-serving nonsense I’ve seen in a long time. Welcome to DebunkerScience.

David wrote : First, you certainly can derive altitude (“vertical dataes”) and other trajectory data from theodolite (tracking surveyor telescope) data if you had more than one such theodolite station, which Mogul had. It’s called mathematical triangulation using simple trigonometry. I’m surprised that Gilles, as an alleged mathematician, has never heard of it.

You are cute David with your ad Hominem attacks, but in the NYU technical report number 1 (page 13), a historiographical source et not David Rudiak world, it is writed :

The flights made in the early part of this program were tracked optically with theodolites. Coupled withthe HEIGHT data, theodolite readings provided a fairly reliable HORIZONTAL locus of the balloon. HOWEVER, even in the clear air of New Mexico, this method is useful for not more than 100 miles and, unless accurate height data are available, theodolite stations provide useful data FOR NOT MORE THAN 40 MILES.

Sorry for you. But I suppose you will revisited the NYU technical reports as you revisite diaries and newspapers too?

Then, when the flight #4 have reached more than 40 miles, "theodolite technic" only CANT provide the scientific dataes whished.

Theodolite gived HORIZONTAL dataes, and not VERTICAL dataes as you invented, until a certain distance. Theodolite MUST be coupled with height (vertical) dataes too, as the technical report number 1 stipulates, and not David Rudiak.

The range of the SCR84 radar (which followed the radar-targets embarked) is 40 miles too. They were not radar station north Alamogordo, as Roswell base refused to track the balloons.

So, after 40 miles, the team have not dataes (height) to made a scientific report. The radar-targets technic was useless and abandonned with the knowledge of such service flight which flew!

Or please explain me why the radar technic used (it exist an historical drawing of cluster number 2 with radar targets) have been abandonned?An Angel was came from the Sky and gived the knowledge to NYU team or they done flights to obtain that knowledge? Personnaly, I have choosen.

Gilles, rather than responding go all of your points individually, why don’t we get back to the REAL point. You and other debunkers (e.g. Charles Moore and USAF) claim Flight #4 was a fully configured constant-altitude balloon. According to Mogul records, all such balloons were numbered and if they went up, they were tracked (to determine constant-altitude performance), and recorded in flight summaries.

On the other hand, if they never went up (e.g., “canceled” on account of clouds), there is necessarily NO flight data, and they are not recorded in flight summaries. There is just a hole in the numbered sequence. Examples besides Flight #4, were #2, #3, and #9. We know for a fact that #2 and #9 never went up, so that alone totally discredits your history-rewriting argument that they DID get launched but were removed from flight summaries and became unlogged “service flights” because they went beyond some arbitrary tracking range and no longer had a complete set of tracking data.

Further if that were the case, there would have been very few surviving Mogul flights in the summaries, since MOST of them traveled well beyond optical or radio/radar tracking range. I’ll save you the trouble of looking this up in the records; here are diagrams of where over 50 of the N.M. Moguls went and eventually crashed:

http://roswellproof.com/Mogul_Crashes.html

These also illustrate that prevailing N.M. winds took ~95% of these in directions nowhere near the Foster Ranch.

An early example of such a Mogul is Flight #10 from July 5, which left the state and was last reported seen in Colorado. The project report shows a plot of the altitude data up until they lost contact; there is no recorded ground track. So the tracking was seemingly incomplete, but the flight was still recorded.

All they did was use the tracking data they had up to when they lost contact. They didn’t throw it out and remove the flight from the flight summaries, your revisionist fantasy to try to explain the total absence of any “Flight #4” in Mogul records. The reason Flight #4 isn’t there is because it was “canceled” on account of clouds, just like the flight the day before. The CAA had forbidden them to carry out possibly lengthy constant-altitude launches except with minimal cloud cover because of the potential threat to aviation.

Now to your other points. You also claim that Flight #4 had no altitude data, therefore was removed from the records. Really? Since there are no Flight #4 records (the whole point of this debate), how exactly did you determine this—psychic powers? No, your claim was no doubt based on another of Charles Moore’s dubious 40+-year “memories” that they only tried radar tracking, but no radiosonde tracking on this alleged balloon flight because they had no radiosonde recorder.

Well this would make it totally unique of ALL of these early Moguls, since every single one besides “Flight #4” was shown to have radiosonde tracking. (In fact, of all 1947 logged Mogul flights, 36 total, only 3 from September are listed as lacking radiosonde tracking.) E.g., look at the schematic of your precious Flight #2 that does show radar targets. (Remember, the earlier canceled flight you claim somehow proves the fictitious #4 also must have had radar targets.) Directly below the radar targets is shown a radiosonde. Just because you also try radar tracking doesn’t mean you throw out one of your major tracking systems, used almost 100% on your other flights. Does that make any sense?

Further, it is not necessary to have an automatic recorder to use a radiosonde. Another of Moore’s highly questionable claims is how they devised manual recording only after Flight #4 because they didn’t have the recorder. Oh really? Then why does the summary for Flight #1 back in Pennsylvania state that 50% of the radiosonde tracking was WITHOUT a recorder, the other half with the recorder? I guess Moore missed that in more of his revisionist messing with data in order to create a fictitious Flight #4.

Part 2:You are also still claming you can’t get altitude data with optical theodolite tracking, more utter bilge. That’s true only if you have one theodolite tracker, instead of the multiple stations they actually used so they could triangulate ground position, range, and altitude, i.e. a full trajectory in 3-D space, using basic trigonometry. That you would continue to deny this fact is taking you into the realm of flagrant lying.

Theodolite tracking limited to only 40 miles? Maybe only true in certain directions if there were intervening mountains and the balloons were flying low. But Flight #5 the day after (the REAL first N.M. Mogul flight in flight histories) was optically tracked by theodolite clear to Roswell over an intervening mountain range, a distance of almost 100 miles. Only the descent part could not be tracked optically from the ground, or by radiosonde, but they didn’t then throw out the data and flight because they lacked a complete data set.

This is also clearly at odds with another of Moore’s dubious “clear” memories of them optically tracking his fictional #4 clear to the towns of Bluewater, Arabella, and the Capitan Mountains before they lost track of it. That’s a distance of 70 miles, not “40 miles”. For sure, the REAL Flight #17 from September was tracked beyond these same points by both radiosonde and theodolite 100% of the time to a distance of about 85 miles, when they stopped tracking because of nightfall. Here is a plot of #17 compared to Moore’s fictionalized and hoaxed Flight #4 trajectory:

http://roswellproof.com/Flight4_Addendums.html#anchor_3666

Gilles may want to study this as excellent examples of his psycho-social “retrospective falsification”, “will to believe”, “hypothesis verification bias”, and “rewriting history”, because the REAL Flight #17 fits exactly with details that Moore’s DebunkerPerfect 40+-year-old memory instead attributed to his mythical Flight #4. E.g., he claimed that the “exotic” N.M. names of Capitan Peak, Arabela, and Bluewater stuck in his memory from the alleged Flight #4 and that “This [Flight #4] provided the only connection that I have ever had with those places." Oh really?

So amazingly, the REAL historical Mogul documentation PROVES they had no problems at all optically tracking for 85 miles and getting a full ground track on a real Mogul, one flying in the exact same direction as the claimed fictional Mogul #4. The real #17 also flew much lower, by 4 to 5 miles, than the altitude claimed by Moore for #4, and also beyond the intervening Capitan Mt. Range, therefore under less favorable conditions for full optical tracking. But they couldn’t do this for #4, therefore had to throw everything out, because Gilles must have it this way to preserve his fantasy of a real Flight #4.

In addition, one of Moore’s claimed memories was they were still tracking #4 with theodolite beyond the point where they allegedly lost track with the radar. In other words, Moore was claiming they DID track it with radar, presumably out to Moore’s alleged limit of the radar tracking (again 40 miles). If that were the case, they also would have had complete radar tracking data up to this point, another reason not to throw the balloon data out, as Gilles is claiming they did. (I won’t even go into later Mogul reports where they state how they experimentally tracked with radar well BEYOND Moore’s alleged 40 mile radar limit.)

Part 3:Interestingly, even though Moore claims they allegedly had some success with radar tracking on #4, for some reason they hardly used it afterward. Of the early Moguls, only #8 the next month lists radar as being used. That might suggest maybe they never started with radar when they got to N.M. and instead relied on proven tracking methods instead, before trying again with radar.

But, of course, there had to be a totally undocumented Mogul and it just HAD to have radar, otherwise how do you explain Mack Brazel’s radar target description? (Try a planted cover story and orchestrated debunking campaign instead, to fit with Gen. Ramey’s balloon debunkery and the military debunking balloon demonstrations that followed.)

Every single one of Gilles’ rationalizations as to why there would be no Flight #4 in Mogul records turns out to be absolute, total factual bunk. They are all desperate, hand-waving attempts to try to salvage the unsalvageable. Flight #4 was “canceled” because of cloud cover, end of story. It never went up, just like the similarly canceled #2, #3, and #9, therefore that is the REAL reason there is no record of #4 in Mogul histories. Everything else is fantasy on his part.

Of course Gilles can’t have that, because he knows full well that without a Flight #4, his whole debunking case collapses. And that is the real reason he argues so irrationally and dishonestly, inventing nonsense reasons why it wouldn’t be recorded in Mogul records. It based on another of his psycho-social phenomena common to human beings, even afflicting psycho-social debunkers who think they are immune to it. It’s called psychological denial. He is so psychologically committed to the Mogul hypothesis (the “will-to-believe” ad hominem), that he is unable to even consider how nonsensical it is, in this case, a nonexistent “canceled” balloon being responsible for the Roswell incident.

David, you claim that cancelled or annulated fights are the flights "jumped" in the NYU table. But that's wrong.

- May 1947 the 29th (West Coast), there was an apparatus launch, followed by B17 in Crary's Diary. Right?

- June the 4th, there was an apparatus launch with reception on ground and followed by plan (CD). Right?

- May the 8th (East coast, Middletown)), there is balloons followed by B17. Trouble with oil plan made no possibility to continue the experiment (same source). Right?

- Same day, there is a cancelation cause winds for Charles Moore "team" in east coast (same source). Right?

Just for 3 of such examples, you can see that the team LAUNCHED apparatus with NONE mention in the NYU table of the research flights. That's factual.

They FLEW and were not "canceled" or "annulated", as they are not labelled in the famous table (cause no dataes exploitable probably).

Then, apparatus could be LAUNCHED without mentions in the NYU famous table. That's factual.

More, at least, 2 balloons apparatus were launched in Alamogordo I expedition before flight #5 (May the 29th, June the 4th). They are not recorded in NYU table. Such NYU apparatus FLEW because they are followed by plan! That's factual.

You make as if there were no one NYU apparatus launched before flight #5: all have been cancelated or annulated if we follow you. That's not factual.

Name such two flights as you want : "service", "research", "tests" or dunno what, but such NYU apparatus FLEW in time and space of your saucer recovery. That's factual.

That's totaly false and inaccurated to make as if there was nothing flying before june the 5th in alamogordo I expedition.

The drawing of flight 2 shows radar-targets in the apparatus. So, I dont see any reason that May the 29th and June the 4th, there were no radar-targets in the assembly.

As it exists probably a reason why the team have abandonned the radar-targets tracking technic. They have experienced something and Moore well explained that, despite your accusation of debunker or dunno what.

In other words, and I finish here because you are dishonnest:

NYU apparatus FLEW before fights #5 in Alamorgordo I expedition, in time and space of the Foster recovery.

It is very reasonnable to see in one of them, probably for the june the 4th, the candidat of your saucer, cause the compatible wind meteorogical dataes of this day and the identity relations between NYU apparatus and what is testimoned by first had witnesses.

Structuraly, Globaly and Dimensionnaly (sticks ie) the coincidences are "suspect" and convincing for any common sens person that one this apparatus and the saucer are the Roswell wreckage.

“- June the 4th, there was an apparatus launch with reception on ground and followed by plan (CD). Right?”

Yes, right. DR said as much in an earlier post:

“Crary’s second entry in his diary on June 4 (after the “cancelled” on account of clouds entry) of a balloon cluster carrying a sonobuoy listening device to test reception in the air and ground would likely have been an unnumbered service flight (half a dozen balloons would do the job). But this also means it would have lacked the usual true Mogul flight configuration of a large balloon/balloon train, constant-altitude control equipment, tracking devices such as radiosondes and radar targets, batteries, parachutes, etc. There was no need to track such a service flight since it was not a constant-altitude flight and was testing only sonobuoy reception. Nor would it be designed to stay up long or go very far, like a true constant-altitude flight. It would go straight up, the rubber balloons would burst at high altitude, and come straight down.”

Then Gilles, said: “Name such … flights as you want : "service", "research", "tests" or dunno what, but such NYU apparatus FLEW in time and space of your saucer recovery. That's factual.”

Yes, we’ve agreed that an apparatus (if that’s what you want to call it) flew on June 4. But you seem to be so focused on your personality clash with DR that you are either not comprehending or ignoring that there is an absolutely crucial difference in outcome depending on whether it was a service flight or a research flight. A research flight could conceivably have made it to the Foster Ranch from Alamogordo on June 4 if and only if the constant-altitude control system on it functioned in the manner that Charles Moore speculated it did. A balloon “apparatus” without an altitude control system could not have made it to that distance. Do the math.